TAP shorthaul business class: labour dispute still affecting catering?
 

I’m planning a weekend in Lisbon from London and TP’s timings look much better than BA’s. Does anyone:

• have any recent experience of business class catering? (it seems that a labour dispute was affecting service ~7 months ago – see the One Mile At A Time blog for more details)
• know whether flights operated by Portugalia to London City are affected? (I’m assuming not as it’s a different crew base)

Thanks in advance for any advice.

For the past 3 or 4 months, no-one has reported, which means that it shouldn't affect any flights for now. Portugalia flights are never affected, but they don't have an oven onboard either - so only cold meals.

Flew TAP J within Europe in December. Was quite impressed by their short-haul catering. Nice meal choices and great quality in my opinion. Flight time was > 4h.

It still happens. I had it happen in late November. It's not a labor dispute, but a "feature" of the contract. When they're short-staffed at minimum staff levels (3 staff instead of 4 on a narrow-body plane) their contract says they don't have to provide service.

Portugália is not affected by this.

Some time ago I read an article saying that TAP was contracting 100 new cabin crew members until the end of last year.

Did anybody encounter the famous "no service due to reduced cabin crew" experience this year already?

Flew with them twice last month, intra-Europe J and service was excellent (and present!) :)

Nice to know. After reading all those no service posts I was hesitating to book a flight in J, but I guess I will give them a try now. :)

I think you'll be positively surprised. The food was absolutely excellent, as well as the service and drinks. One of the flights was 1h long but we were served a full breakfast that we had to rush to finish.

That sounds indeed very tempting. :)

Same here. Flew TAP MUC-LIS and back twice in J. Service and food as well as condition of the cabin was better than for example Lufthansa. And the ticket was cheaper than LH. The TAP lounge at LIS is also nice. Good selection of food and nice bar.

I flew over the weekend TAP VIE-LIS return and was nicely impressed. We had a 3 course meal for each flight, which is 3 hours long. The food was good quality: one of the main was sea bass with fennel and peas, the other was a full roasted duck leg with asparagus and brown rice. Desert were good, as well as starters (salad with some protein: salmon or chicken).

On a related note, is it true that there is no longer a divider curtain between Executive and Economy?

There was a curtain on my flights.