TAP Air Portugal: The long-haul experience in the back of the plane
A very Western Hemisphere airline with an interesting route network.
I’d never flown on TAP Air Portugal before. But I got to take four long-haul flights on TAP over an eight-day period in March traveling to Lisbon to run the EDP Half Marathon and then going on a jaunt to Mozambique:
San Francisco to Lisbon
Lisbon to Maputo
Maputo to Lisbon
Lisbon to Miami
All the flights were in the back of the plane. I liked the airline and thought I’d share some impressions. I was traveling standby using reciprocal staff travel benefits. But while there’s a short section at the end that’s nonrev-specific, the remainder is relevant to all types of travelers.
An interesting route network
TAP has a long and somewhat checkered commercial history, going in and out of state ownership. It is currently government-owned, having gone back into public ownership after taking a hit during the pandemic. But from 2015 to 2020, it was controlled by a private consortium led by one of the founders of Jet Blue.
TAP — a Star Alliance member — has an interesting route network. It flies to Lisbon from 10 North American airports: JFK, Newark, Washington Dulles, Boston, Miami, Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto, Montreal, and Cancun. If Portugal is your final destination, TAP is an obvious choice if only because you have very few other nonstop choices. The only flights by US carriers at press time were a daily Newark-Lisbon service by United on one of its most elderly B767s and a JFK-Lisbon one on Delta.
From Lisbon, TAP has a fairly wide European short-haul network, but what makes it most interesting are its sub-Saharan Africa destinations (it also serves a bunch of North Africa ones). These include some that no other European carrier — let alone any North American one — flies to:
Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire
Accra, Ghana
Banjul, Gambia
Bissau, Guinea-Bissau
Cape Town, South Africa
Conakry, Guinea
Dakar, Senegal
Luanda, Angola
Maputo, Mozambique
Sao Tomé and Principe
It makes for a more interesting moving map than the tedious North Atlantic ones over which I have mesmerized so often.
Not surprisingly, TAP’s South American network emphasizes Brazil, with flights from Lisbon to a total of six cities in that country. The airline also flies into Caracas, not a destination served by many these days. But TAP doesn’t fly to Asia or the Middle East. (Except they do serve Tel Aviv — technically in Asia, but which pretty well all European airlines make part of their short-haul, intra-European networks.) So TAP is very much a Western Hemisphere airline.
TAP at the back
TAP’s long-haul fleet consists of A330 aircraft — including the A330-neo, of which it was the launch customer — although it flies some shorter transatlantic routes using the narrow body A321. The A330 is one of my favorite aircraft due to its 2-4-2 configuration in Economy (tapering to 2-3-2 in the last few rows). Two-abreast seating on the window is a huge boon if you are traveling with a companion on a crowded flight.
Boeing no longer makes any aircraft offering that. The B767 — with 2-3-2 seating — was its only aircraft ever to have done so in modern times. I would go as far as to say that the seating configuration on the A330 can be a good enough reason to choose TAP if it happens to go where you are headed.
TAP offers a two-class configuration — Business and Economy. There is no Premium Economy, in the sense the term is used these days in the long-haul market. But it does have an extra-legroom/recline section in regular Economy that is marketed as the “Comfort Area” and takes up seven and 11 rows on the regular and neo A330, respectively. Expect to pay about $75 per segment premium to get a Comfort seat. I didn’t sit in one, and they didn’t really look as though they offered very much extra room. The Comfort rows are most obviously visible by virtue of their red-accented headrests. But they could be worth it to increase your chance of having an empty seat next to you or a row to yourself. If the flight isn’t full, TAP will pack everyone who doesn’t pay the extra in the regular seats, so the Comfort Area tends to be less crowded.
One thing that sets TAP apart is that once on board, there is virtually no opportunity to purchase anything, let alone upsell to get your to do so. They feed you a hot meal, and offer you wine and beer served in paper cups to go with it. And then there’s a boxed snack before landing with another drinks service. But that’s about it. Other than Wi-Fi there’s literally nothing you can purchase — either by way of food, beverage, or anything else. It’s quite refreshing in a way. But it may disappoint anyone hoping for a gin and tonic.
As for the Wi-Fi, there are four options, ranging from €3 for messaging only to €29 for Internet access for the entire flight. I found the Wi-Fi to work well enough.
Food is fine by economy class standards. There’s a choice of two dishes. On one of the flights — the one out of Maputo — the lunch, a fish dish, was above average by back-of-the-plane standards.
The flight attendants were friendly and professional on the flights I took. The crew on the return segment from Maputo was the same as the one on the outbound 72-hours earlier — quite a long layover for them, even though it seemed a short trip for us — and greeted us warmly when they saw we were back for more of their fine service.
The flight attendants come round with water mid-flight. But there’s no mid-flight snack or drinks service during a day flight as you might get on some other airlines in economy. You can go to the galley to try to snag another beer or cup of wine, but I sense this isn’t really part of the featured product and the crew are doing you a favor if they oblige.
The Recaro-designed seats are also fine. The winged headrests are more supportive than many. And the seat back storage gives you upper and lower sections to put things in (and don’t come pre-stuffed with annoying magazines or catalogs). All seats have USB-A and AC power.
On the minus side, I was not very impressed with the choice of movies. They don’t have much in the way of newish releases.
TAP has a liberal approach to cabin baggage. Although it has theoretical size and weight restrictions on cabin bags, it doesn’t enforce them — at least, not on its long-haul flights. As a practical matter, you can expect to take on board anything you could on a US long-haul carrier.
Lisbon airport
If you’re flying TAP, you’ll be experiencing Lisbon airport. It’s not a great airport. And the long walks can be reminiscent of Heathrow, even though it’s much smaller overall. But it has some energy and atmosphere. One thing to be prepared for is that it doesn’t seem to have enough gates. Many long-haul aircraft board and deplane with steps and buses. Be careful not to cut it too fine getting to the gate when departing if you aren’t certain your plane is on a jet-bridge.
If you’re headed into the city, there’s a Metro station that’s easy to navigate even if you don’t speak any Portuguese. If you need an airport hotel, I recommend the Hotel Star Inn Lisbon Aeroporto. It offers a shuttle bus, but it’s less than 10 minutes on foot from the terminals, so it’s probably quicker just to walk. It’s a comfortable, lively place with good service, a decent restaurant and bar, and nice rooms. Rates generally include breakfast, which starts at 2 AM — something I wish other airport hotels would do. I paid around $180. It’s a bit pricey by Lisbon standards, but look out for discounted rates.
Nonrev travel on TAP
If you’re lucky enough to have airline staff travel benefits, TAP is quite nonrev-friendly. We get ZED Low fares on TAP in Economy, sadly with no opportunity to list for Business (although I noticed Business was sold out a day or two ahead on all the flights we took). Listing is automatic with ticket purchase on MyID. And — unusually — when loads are on the low side, TAP’s system sometimes confirms actual seat assignments when you check in online the day before, so you are not actually standing by at the airport. Even if you don’t get the seats online, you can probably get them at the check-in counter a couple of hours ahead of the flight rather than standing by at the gate — unless, of course, the load is such that they can’t be certain you’ll get on at all.
That said, the automatically generated seats are not always ones you’d want. On one flight, we were automatically assigned two middle seats the night before on a flight that had much better ones available. You can try to change seats online if this happens, although the system can be a bit glitchy. However, we found ground staff to be nice to nonrevs at all the airports we flew out of. And we ended up with good seats on all flights. But they don’t seem to offer nonrevs Comfort seats in the way US carriers routinely do with their equivalents. Rather, nonrevs are treated like what they call “Classic” Economy passengers, giving them a checked bag (not that I ever check bags) and a choice of regular seats.
When it comes to checking loads, I found TAP staff respond on the Staff Traveler app — but sometimes only after a few days. Fortunately, all of our flights were quite wide open.
TAP sum-up
Pros: Interesting route network, especially to African destinations. Nice, new aircraft with two-abreast seating in Economy on the window. No on-board upsell. Friendly service. Cons: Lowish frills, if frills are what you want. Weak movie selection. Sum-up: Much to like. A great airline for Western Hemisphere explorers. And by far the dominant carrier on flights between the US and Portugal. ✈️