Businessmen interested in Azores Airlines accuse the regional government of having changed the privatization rules halfway through the process and are calling for a new tender to be opened. The president of the Azorean executive guarantees the transparency of the process but blames the board of directors and the jury in the bidding process.
Speaking to Antena 1/Açores, Vítor Coelho, a member of the consortium that drafted the specifications for the privatization of Azores Airlines, said that the Azorean government was not initially expected to assume the airline’s debt.
“The debt would pass [to the company]. At the time it was roughly 453 million. Halfway through the bidding process there was a substantial change, adding another 286 million, with the holding company taking on the rest and we don’t know at the moment,” he said.
The weight of the debt led the consortium to withdraw from the tender. Now that they have learned that the Azorean government can assume the debt, the entrepreneurs have sent a letter asking for explanations from the board of directors and the regional finance secretary.
Vítor Coelho wants to know if the executive will open a new bidding period after assuming the debt, claiming that the first one “is tainted with illegalities.”
“We’re waiting for an answer. Once we have the answer, we’ll have to get the consortium together and find out what we can and can’t do,” he said.

“SATA has the conditions for us to submit a bid. Of course, a new evaluation of the company is needed, given the debt, but I think that at the moment [the conditions] exist and are in place for us to be able to submit a bid in a new tender,” he added.
Faced with this criticism, the president of the regional government, José Manuel Bolieiro, guaranteed the “maximum transparency” of the privatization process.
“Anyone who thinks it could still be more transparent would be entitled to do so, but there is no opacity,” he said.
The head of the Azorean executive stressed, however, that “the government has never allowed itself to be involved in the management of the process, because it is a competence, on the one hand, of the board of directors of the SATA group, on the other hand, of the jury which has the responsibility, with total independence, to make the choices”.
After announcing the cancellation of the tender in May 2024, the Azorean executive decided in March this year that, “since the conditions were met to maintain the current privatization process of Azores Airlines”, it should “continue”.
The only bidder that went through to the next stage of the tender, New Tour/MS Aviation (“NT/MS”), plans to include two other Portuguese entrepreneurs and increase the purchase price to 15.2 million euros.

In Diário Insular, José Lourenço-director and Armando Mendes, Editor-in-Chief.

Translated to English as a community outreach program from the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) and the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department (MCLL) as part of Bruma Publication and ADMA (Azores-Diaspora Media Alliance) at California State University, Fresno, PBBI thanks Luso Financial for sponsoring NOVIDADES.