A company that dominated ground-handling services at the 4 de Fevereiro Airport for more than 20 years was not authorized to operate at the AIAAN and was replaced by two foreign companies chosen “by political decision and without a public tender.”
Following the statements by the Minister of Transport regarding the Government’s reasons for excluding Ghassist from the list of ground-handling (Handling) service providers at the new Dr. António Agostinho Neto International Airport (AIAAN), a company source considers the minister’s words “humiliating,” assuring that the real motivations are different from those presented by Ricardo de Abreu.
According to the minister, the choice of companies resulted from political decisions and the need to open the market to companies with greater prestige. “Ghassist, over 30 years, never left Luanda. We have room to grow; there is space for Ghassist to continue its activities. The 4 de Fevereiro Airport will not stop operating, so we need to have a service provider there,” said Ricardo de Abreu, who, when questioned about the exclusion of Ghassist from the public tender for providing services at the AIAAN, replied that a tender was not necessary.
“It was not necessary to have a tender.”
“Ghassist is at 4 de Fevereiro, and we placed two new operators at the new airport to have options. It was a political decision, and we managed to attract major benchmark partners in this area. For an airport in Angola to say it has a service operator called Menzies is one thing, and that it has Ghassist is another,” the minister compared, recommending that Ghassist approach the airport operator and express interest if it wishes to operate at Catumbela Airport.
For the company source, besides considering the minister’s remarks a “humiliation of Angolan professionals,” Ricardo de Abreu’s words demonstrate “a profound disregard for national merit.” They recall that when the new airport needed support to begin operations, it was Ghassist that provided it—before being discarded.
Contrary to the minister’s justification, the source claims the measure followed “a strategy for transferring money abroad,” revealing that the new companies raised the prices of their services to airline operators from 6 to 8 thousand dollars.
The source even points to alleged corruption “schemes” that “force” companies to bribe individuals supposedly linked to the Ministry of Transport, arguing that Ghassist ended up excluded for refusing to align with such practices. The source, speaking anonymously on behalf of Ghassist, questions, for example, how the company Aviapartner obtained its license before regularizing its situation in Angola, noting that the companies that were favored did not even have the technical capacity and therefore had to rely on Ghassist’s staff.
COMPANY CONTINUES OPERATING UNTIL TAAG PAYS THE 20 MILLION USD
According to Ghassist’s estimates, operations at 4 de Fevereiro may become unsustainable, since protocol flights do not have the same regularity as commercial flights. Nonetheless, the company maintains the more than 400 employees who remain active, given that part of the more than 800 employees were hired by the two new companies.
The company, which has a 16% stake held by TAAG and 6% by SGA in its share capital, claims a 20-million-dollar debt owed by TAAG.
Valor Económico, 12/10/2025
