Tarom - infusions with state aid, zero efficiency

The Tarom company, which in recent years has benefited from several state aids, most recently - in the amount of 100 million euros (but of which 49.5 million euros was paid to the company in 2020 as a loan) - received on past, presented yesterday yet another proof of its inefficiency and the fact that it needs to be restructured from the ground up or privatized, after in the first hours of the day 10 races were canceled due to the fact that the pilots did not show up for work, suddenly citing health problems.

Passengers who were going to take off with Tarom aircraft had to wait for hours, in the middle of the night, in the waiting rooms of the Henri Coandă - Otopeni airport, because the airline announced the cancellation of flights to and from Cairo, Amman and Beirut "due to unavailability of flight crew members".

A statement issued by Tarom immediately after the cancellation of the three flights read: "In accordance with international aviation regulations and strict domestic flight safety policies, each of the respective flights was canceled because a crew member of each aircraft declared himself unfit of flight, being unable to restore the flight plan in such a short time. The individual decisions of the pilots were made in accordance with the regulations in force, to ensure the safety and comfort of passengers and crew."

Later, for the same reasons, the flights to Beirut, Cairo, Amman, Iasi, Budapest, Madrid, Istanbul, Oradea, Brussels, Frankfurt, Paris and Amsterdam were also canceled during the morning, which amounted to a spontaneous strike, "for reasons medical", of 20 pilots of the Tarom company.

The company's representatives immediately apologized to the passengers for the inconvenience caused and stated that they will offer them convenient flight alternatives or refund the value of the paid tickets.

Following these incidents, the Minister of Transport requested the management of the Tarom company to urgently take measures to remedy the situation.

According to a post on the official Facebook page, Minister Sorin Grindeanu stated: "The management team, selected based on the provisions of the Corporate Management Ordinance, has all the legal leverage to take administrative decisions necessary to avoid such blockages and to prevent their recurrence! Therefore, the management team must urgently come up with an effective restructuring plan, through which to ensure the operational capacity of the Tarom company. The emphasis must be placed on the insurance of the sailing staff and not on maintaining in the scheme some people who do not have a contribution to the good functioning of Tarom! I am waiting for an applied and detailed public communication from the Director General of Tarom to announce the identified solutions!".

The appeal of the Minister of Transport remained without result, as long as until the closing of the edition no less than 26 air flights were canceled yesterday by the Tarom company.

Tarom's spokesperson, Alexandru Anghel, told Digi24 that solutions are being sought for the affected passengers. Alexandru Anghel specified: "We have 29 pilots or commanders who invoked the situation of "unfit to fly". (...) We have to see how we frame the situation and the passengers will not remain unremunerated, because either they will look for another flight option, or rescheduling, or compensation. There is a serious framework at European level in which all European airlines operate, we cannot apply them selectively, we will fit into this framework of passenger rights and we will respect them".

Due to the cancellation of the Tarom races, the Romanian delegation that will participate, starting today and until Thursday evening including the NATO summit in Washington, left the country with a military plane, a C-27J Spartan aircraft, to Paris, Brigadier General showed Constantin Spînu, spokesman of the Ministry of National Defense, Brigadier General Constantin Spînu. From Paris, the representatives of our country at the NATO summit were going to take a race to Washington. The delegation includes the Minister of Defense, Angel Tîlvăr and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Luminiţa Odobescu, while President Klaus Iohannis apparently chose to travel by private plane to the US capital.

The whole situation above is, in fact, a strike by the pilots and co-pilots of the state-owned airline, which was not publicly announced. The pilots are dissatisfied with the salary income, which according to data cited by Pro Tv, starts at 6,000 euros net/month, while a co-pilot earns 2,000-3,000 euros. Revenues are practically half of the other airlines. The situation would be much worse for the other TAROM employees. According to Agerpres, union leader Narcis Pascu has been threatening a strike at Tarom since June 2023, because the last salary increase would have taken place in 2007, with the fact that hundreds of company employees are still working at the minimum wage in the economy.

The Tarom company has had 18 general directors in the last 11 years, which indicates an acute instability at the management level of the respective economic agent. The position of general manager is currently occupied by Costin Iordache, who was also general manager of the company in January-October 2023. It seems that during the meeting last week between the representatives of the pilots and the management of the company, the pilots warned that they may follow such industrial action if wage demands are not met. Despite these actions to raise awareness of the actual situation, the decision-makers in Tarom's management ignored the situation, focusing rather on the 4-year appointments of the members of the Board of Directors, other appointments within the company, ghosts of some restructuring useless and other derisive aspects, except for the improvement of the working conditions of the seafaring staff.