TAP AIR PORTUGAL, formally known as TAP Portugal (Transportes Aéreos Portugueses) is a semi-privately owned airline and the “flag carrier” of Portugal. It is 50% owned by the Portuguese government, 45% by the Atlantic Gateway Consortium (headed by JetBlue and Azul founder David Neeleman) and 5% by shareholders. Its primary base is at Lisbon Humberto Delgado airport, and it has a secondary base at Porto airport.
TAP has been a member of Star Alliance since 2005 and operates over 90 aircraft.
Routes
TAP has a very large presence along the Eastern Seaboard of North America, along with Brazil. It also operates flights to Caracas, Venezuela. In Africa, it flies to many of the Portuguese-diaspora nations along with several West African and Atlantic Portuguese territories.
In North America, it flies to Toronto, Miami, Newark, New York JFK and Boston. In Latin America, it flies to Caracas, and the remainder of its network is to primary and secondary Brasilian cities, namely Belem, Fortaleza, Natal, Recife, San Salvador, Belo Horizonte, Brasilia, Porto Alegre, Sao Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro.
In Africa, it flies to Dakar, Abidjan, Lome, Accra, Luanda, Sao Tome, Luanda, and Maputo. Off-shore, it flies to Ponda Delgada in the Azores, as well as Sao Pedro and Praia in Cabo Verde.
It also operates a secondary long-haul hub out of Porto, from which it flies to Newark, Rio de Janeiro, and Sao Paulo.
Fleet
TAP Air Portugal has approximately 90 aircraft in its fleet, with an additional 50+ on the way. Its long-haul network is flown on Airbus A330-200s (15), Airbus A330-300s (4) and Airbus A340-300s (4). It plans to replace these planes with the Airbus A330-900 NEO sometime in the next few years (currently with 18 on order).
Among its narrowbody fleet, TAP operates Airbus A319s (21), Airbus A320s (20), and Airbus A321s (4). It has 24 A321-NEOs and 16 Airbus A320-NEOs in the order pipeline.
Finally, its regional subsidiary TAP express has Embraer-190’s (9), Embraer 195’s (4) and ATR-72-600s (9).
Summary: TAP Air Portugal
TAP’s network is highly designed around the ethnic Portuguese diaspora in various corners of the world, but it does tend to offer competitive fares (particularly in premium cabins) between the East Coast in the U.S. as well as Brazil to many places in Europe. Furthermore, as a Star Alliance member, they offer the added benefit of sharing reciprocal loyalty accrual and redemption opportunities with several global partners.
