wingnuthead

I would love some objective feedback on TAP if there's any to be had. Tripadvisor is filled with lots of complaining and moaning, as is flyertalk and skytrax.

Never flew TAP, and looking at their Stopover fares so we can see Portugal on one of our wanderlust trips....

Certainly, their website is a mess, and their seats and fares are a colossally confusing mishmash. 7 different fares multiplied by 7 different aircraft types times 10 different seats, etc. I've never seen anything like it, and need 4 webpages open simply to figure out what I actually might be buying.

All that said, all I care about is a safe and reliable bus ride in the sky. Not looking for gourmet meals or a long term relationship with a flight attendant I'll never see again, just a decent seat, and mostly on time performance.

Can anyone comment on their basic inflight product, as well as

Palal

Safe - totally!
Reliable - mostly
Decent seat? Depends on the aircraft.
Long-haul product - pretty decent in Y, with food better than UA. However, on east coast-LIS flights, they take FOREVER to do meal service, leaving little time to sleep.
Lounge - quite decent.
Inbound passport control in LIS is generally a 40-min+ mess.

wingnuthead

Thanks SOO much. No hyperbole, just rational thoughts.

Gonna do UK to Lis to EWR/JFK (whatever has the new A330 Neo).

Oddly, their business class is like 1/2 the price buying it with a stopover, so gonna do that.

minhaoxue

IAN-UK

A friend is coming back on that flight. TAP is advising passengers to expect a 5 hour delay.

IAN-UK

The ride will be safe. But even the airline's staunchest fan would be hard pressed to call it reliable.

The long-haul seat will be borderline decent in economy, and equipment-dependent in business. Intra-European sectors are unlikely to impress in business, but in economy they are no more miserable than most other European carriers.

On board service can delightful if you get a young and enthusiastic crew. But it's more likely the long-haul will attract the, errrr, more established crews whose sole aim is to get things out of the way so they can sit in the galley reading magazines.

But with the airline chasing low-cost status, tickets can be a bargain.

minhaoxue

Yes, just got back into SFO this evening after a 6 hour delay. When they were pushing the plane back from the remote stand, the arm from the pull truck broke. They found us another aircraft fortunately. One and done with this airline.

LondonBoundSW8

Flew TAP business with 2 night stopover LGW-LIS-GIG and JFK-LIS on both the retrofitted old planes and the new a330neo just last week.

All on time, business on the long haul flights was great, maybe we got lucky with the crew. Food weirdly was better on our short haul flights between LGW-LIS than it was on the long haul, don't know how that is.

Lounge in Lisbon is great. No queues for passport control either, we used our UK passports so electronic gates.

Definitely would use them again if I gurantee the same lie down beds. I just wish they'd open their checkin desks a little earlier so if you want to get into the lounge or do some shopping beforehand it isn't rushed. They only seemed to open max 3 hours to departure.

stephem

We have an upcoming business class itinerary LCY-OPO-LIS-JFK and are hoping for the best. We figured LCY-OPO would be one smaller airport to another, and then OPO-LIS should be painless as a domestic segment. All we care about on the final flight is getting to NY eventually... I guess we have fairly low expectations, but we did build the itinerary with some of the complaints about connections in LIS in mind, and we picked the JFK route because it seems to have the NEO on it more or less all the time.

jcsimard

Limited experience here. We just flew with with them in Biz once a year, for the last 3 years, coming back from CPH to MIA.
We really like them, old 330, new 330 NEO, doesn't matter. Food, wine and service is great.

The problem mentioned with long immigration lines is for people flying into LIS on a non-Schengen flight with a non EU passport, but if you have a tight connection they'll let you through faster, even in coach.

Anyhow, we just booked DUB-LIS-MIA in Biz for next year, with a 4 day stopover. DUB was cheaper than CPH this time.

One last thing: The Lounge next to the TAP lounge, accepts Priority Pass... even on arrival.

Oh by the way, they really recognized our Star Alliance Gold status, coming to us first for meal selection on board and having the purser coming to us to thank us for being gold.

IAN-UK

I'm sure everything will go well, but I am curious about the choice of a three-sector route between two cities so well connected by direct, non-stop services.

I'm guessing that the fare had something to do with it

tmac100

CLEARLY NOT the fault of TAP equipment, nor TAP anything. Not that time. <redacted> ... perhaps 😉
That arm breaking on the push-back could have happened even if it would have been AA operating an Ilushyn 🙄

tmac100

In all of my flying, this is standard with ALL airlines I have flown on. Some just start arranging their counter 3 hrs before departure, and do not actually open until 2.5 hours before departure.

IAN-UK

I just checked, and of the last seven TP flights to San Francisco, only one arrived on time.

The link below gives OAG's analysis of the one time performance (OTP) of world airlines for the 12 months to May 2019.
TP's awarded one star out of five, and scrapes into the bottom ten airlines in the punctuality league table.

https://www.oag.com/on-time-performa...t-star-ratings

stephem