TAP Closes the Sale of Its 49.9% Stake in SPdH Handling to Menzies — €3.2 Billion State Aid Plan Edges Toward Closure as the National Carrier Cuts Its Last Non-Core Equity Tie Ahead of the Privatisation

TAP told the markets on Thursday afternoon, 7 May 2026, that it had signed the contracts disposing of its 49.9% stake in SPdH — Serviços Portugueses de Handling to Menzies Aviation, the British ground-handling group that already controls the remaining 50.1% of the joint venture and that operates the Lisbon, Porto, Faro and Funchal/Porto Santo lines on which the national carrier's daily turnaround depends. The transaction value was not disclosed, but TAP's 2025 Relatório e Contas already flagged that the put option contemplated a sale at market prices benchmarked to independent expert valuations. Closure is subject to suspensive regulatory clearances. The deal is the last non-core equity tie the carrier has to dispose of under the 2021 Restructuring Plan that the European Commission approved in exchange for the more than €3.2 billion in State Aid that kept the company solvent through the pandemic, and it lands one quarter ahead of the formal opening of TAP's privatisation process.

What was sold and to whom

SPdH — the holding that operates the bulk of TAP's ground-handling work under the Groundforce trade name — has been jointly owned by TAP (49.9%) and Menzies Aviation Portugal (50.1%) since the 2022 court-ordered restructuring that pulled the company back from the brink of insolvency. Under that deal, TAP retained a minority equity position with a corresponding put option, and Menzies took operational and management control. Thursday's communiqué, sent to the Comissão do Mercado de Valores Mobiliários, formalises the exit: TAP transfers the totality of its 49.9% participation to Menzies and signs the parallel commercial contract that secures the continuity of the handling-services arrangement at Lisbon, Porto, Faro and Funchal/Porto Santo for the post-disposal period. Pricing was not disclosed; the 2025 Relatório e Contas language and the put-option mechanism imply a market-priced exit benchmarked to independent valuation.

Why this closes the EU State Aid file

The 2021 Restructuring Plan that the European Commission approved as the legal cover for the more than €3.2 billion of State Aid into TAP carried three structural commitments that the Portuguese state and the company agreed to deliver before the plan would be considered satisfied: a 99-aircraft fleet cap, a series of slot-based concessions, and the disposal of TAP's non-core equity holdings. The Cateringpor disposal to the Swiss group Gate Gourmet — completed earlier in 2026 — closed one of those holdings. The SPdH sale to Menzies closes the second. With Cateringpor's residual public-tender process also in its final phase, the company says the conclusion of these two transactions completes the conditions of the European Commission decision that framed the State Aid. In plain English: the Restructuring Plan stops being the box in which TAP operates as soon as Brussels signs off on these closures, and the 99-aircraft fleet cap and other plan-era constraints become removable in the year ahead.

The handling licence concurso público — and why the Menzies deal is independent of it

Outside the EU State Aid track, the operational ground-handling market in Portugal is being re-bid through the Autoridade Nacional de Aviação Civil's concurso público for new categories 3, 4 and 5 licences at Lisbon, Porto and Faro. SPdH placed second in that competition; the consortium of the Spanish operator Clece and South came first. SPdH has filed a providência cautelar (precautionary injunction) and a parallel main action to suspend the procedure, but the regulator has issued a fundamentação (reasoned resolution) that allows the process to continue, and the file is now in the documentation-analysis phase for the Spanish-led consortium. TAP took the position in Thursday's communiqué that the contractual relationship with Menzies stands independently of the licence award — the company will continue to receive ground-handling services from SPdH at the four airports regardless of how the regulatory contest closes — and explicitly framed that as the operational stability that protects the carrier through the SPdH disinvestment and the parallel privatisation process.

Implications for the privatisation timeline

The privatisation process for TAP has been the structural file in the airline's investor-relations calendar since the Caderno de Encargos was issued. Thursday's SPdH disposal removes one of the residual structural ambiguities about which equity perimeter is being sold. With Cateringpor disposed and SPdH disposed, the perimeter the buyer acquires is now centred squarely on the airline business — the AOC, the fleet, the slot portfolio, the Maintenance & Engineering business, the cargo operation and the brand — without the entanglement of operationally-managed-by-someone-else minority holdings that complicated due diligence in earlier rounds. That is exactly the simplification that bidders and Brussels have asked for. The 99-aircraft fleet cap remains an active constraint until the Commission formally signs off on the closure of the Restructuring Plan, but the path to that sign-off is now visible.

Operational read for passengers and shippers

For passengers and shippers using the Portuguese airport network, the deal is largely transparent in the short term. SPdH continues to operate the bulk of ground-handling at Lisbon, Porto, Faro and Funchal/Porto Santo under the existing licence regime, the Menzies operating model that has run the company since 2022 stays in place, and the commercial arrangement with TAP is preserved. The medium-term operational pivot is what happens at the end of the current concurso público — if the Clece/South consortium prevails on appeal and is awarded the new licences in the categories where it bid, the ground-handling map at Lisbon, Porto and Faro will reshape over the licence transition window. That is a separate process from the equity disposal that TAP closed today, and it will play out on a different calendar.

What's next on the TAP corporate-events calendar

• Regulatory clearance for the SPdH transfer — the suspensive conditions in the contracts cover the standard antitrust and aviation-regulatory filings; closure timing depends on the speed of those clearances.
• Closure of the Cateringpor public tender — TAP's communiqué says this is in its final phase; Brussels needs both transactions on the table before it signs off on the Restructuring Plan.
• European Commission sign-off on the Restructuring Plan — once Cateringpor and SPdH have closed, the Commission can formally certify that the conditions are met and the 99-aircraft cap and other plan-era constraints can be retired.
• Privatisation Caderno de Encargos round — with the SPdH and Cateringpor perimeters out of scope, the privatisation can move into its bidder phase on a cleaner equity footprint.
• SPdH/ANAC handling licence litigation — separate track; SPdH's providência cautelar and main action against the concurso público proceed on the regulatory calendar.

Why this matters for the foreign-resident reader

For the foreign-resident reader who flies in and out of Lisbon, Porto and Faro on TAP — and especially for the diaspora and business-traveller cohorts who use the carrier as the primary inter-continental link to Brazil, the United States, Canada, the Gulf and the African Lusophone destinations — the SPdH disposal is operationally invisible in the short term. The same Menzies-managed ground-handling operation that has been turning TAP aircraft around since 2022 will continue to do so. What changes is the structural read on TAP itself: the carrier is now visibly cleaner of the 2021-era encumbrances than it has been since the pandemic, and the privatisation process — which will define for the medium term who owns the route network the diaspora and the business-traveller cohort relies on — moves one step closer to opening.

Sources: TAP communiqué to the CMVM, 7 May 2026 (Tier 1 corporate institutional disclosure); ECO 7 May 2026, "TAP acorda venda do negócio de 'handling' à Menzies", André Veríssimo, 17:50, updated 18:17 (Tier 2 PT primary); TAP Relatório e Contas 2025 (Tier 1 corporate institutional substrate); European Commission decision on the TAP Restructuring Plan, December 2021 (Tier 1 EU institutional substrate); Autoridade Nacional de Aviação Civil concurso público for handling licences (Tier 1 PT regulator institutional substrate); Cateringpor/Gate Gourmet disposal disclosure, 2026 (Tier 1 corporate institutional substrate).