Or the late night SFO-HKG/SIN flights that used to be pretty common.

Originating at SFO, I didn’t mind those at all.

This kind of flight is also great if you are connecting on. You'd probably get to your final destination by early afternoon, just in time for hotel check in and a long sleep. It's hard for me to sleep on planes and if it's Y it's not gonna happen for me.

The more I think about it, the more I actually like it. Although at 13 hours in the seat, this would be one I'd definitely want to redeem, upgrade, or buy to begin with in J. I recall TAP advertising lots of great J fares a couple years ago, albeit not with the latest lie-flat pods.

If you live in Oakland, it's nice because you have a nonstop from Lisbon - something you probably haven't always had regardless of what time of day it flies. If you're connecting to elsewhere in the Western US, you can make morning flights - something you don't often get with a European arrival. And you get a westbound TATL without losing a full day to travel like you usually do.

I'd never want to spend that long in a Y seat, because then you just lose the following day to sleep, but if you're in J and get a few hours of sleep you should be good to go for the next day.

The timing and time difference is very similar to many southeast Asia (BKK, HKG, SIN, sometimes DEL and others) to Europe flights which were very popular. TG and CX each had several flights leaving between 10 pm - 2 am arriving at LHR, FRA, ZRH, FCO, etc.. every night (not now of course).

f you don't find it too hard to sleep on flights and don't mind odd meal times then they are great imo. Hotels can be inconvenient, but if you live at either end or are connecting somewhere else then they are good. If the alternative is waking up at 4:30 to get the 7 am connecting flight to the hub to make the 11 am departure to the US, that's no fun either.

Wait a minute. Are you saying that TP schedules a flight that lands at SFO around 0600 local and allows that same crew to depart on the SAME DAY, say around 1800 local???

That's insane and unsafe. I hope that I read wrong and the crew gets (at least) 36 hours rest rather than 12. There is no way I would fly on a plane if I knew that the crew was getting only 12 hours rest during daylight hours between two long redeyes.

as Palal stated, the 12-hour flight is probably double-crewed ... two pilots starting on duty, the other two in crew rest, and they swap during the flight

I have no experience with this, but it seems that the duty cycles would have the first crew operating both departures (fly 4, rest 8 in flight, rest 12 at SFO, fly 8, rest 4 in flight) and the second crew operating both arrivals (rest 4 in flight, fly 8, rest 12 at SFO, rest 8 in flight, fly 4)

Presuming the question was about the physiological effects:

Somewhere buried in my personal archives (i.e., somewhere in an unlabeled box) I have a chart I found long ago showing the relative effects of departure and arrival times, taking into account time zone differences. Doing this westbound is definitely not as hard on the system as an overnight eastbound.

My only experience with an overnight westbound was LAX-SYD. Definitely not a problem for me at that age (this was 30 years ago!). The return flight, because departure was just after noon and arrival juts before, didn't cause much problem either, aside from the general fatigue caused by 14 hours on a plane.

I still wouldn't want to get on the eastbound flight if that is how TP is scheduling its pilots. An augmented crew is fine for one segment. But 8 hours rest inflight is not a real 8 hours of rest. I would want all four pilots to get at least 36 hours on the ground in SFO between the two redeye segments.

From what I remember, a flight operated with an augmented crew of 4 would start and end with all 4 on duty on the flight deck and once "top of climb" is reached, crew rest rotations would begin and cycle through until it's time to have all 4 back on the flight deck and alert-ish for descent and landing.

Edited to add: I'm not on the clock and have had a cocktail but from my very cursory scan of 121 crew rest requirements, "flying" more than 8 hours requires at least 16 hours free from duty afterwards. Time spent snoozing on a plane in crew rest does count as "flying." So, based on that, what TP is doing, if reported accurately here, would be against the law for US carriers.

A flight this long would carry a double crew, but my guess is that they would all get 36 hours in the Bay Area.

If this were a US carrier and we were talking about a once daily service on that schedule into a foreign country, I can almost guarantee that all 4 pilots would get a 36-hour layover.

I remember talking to a Qantas flight attendant a while back who told me that when QF started flying 747SPs nonstop to the US, their flight attendants union was able to secure minimum 72-hour layovers in the USA.

I wouldn't call these long, mainly overnight westbound flights "red eyes". Red eyes, to me, are the short, eastbound ones with an abbreviated night. Worst ones for me are the ones that leave west coast north america in the early afternoon and arrive in Europe mid morning or about midnight in the time zone you left. To me, that's even worst than west coast N. Am to east coast N. America overnight. I find that adjustment for the former more difficult with age even flying front cabin.

TP would need 3 pilots in each direction. They could probably get away with having 5 total.
On normal flights with 3 crew, one pilot takes off and then an hour or 2 into the flight goes and rests for 8 hours and comes back to land the plane. The other two pilots fly at cruising level.
Then they stay 26-50 hours at the destination and fly back on the return.

On a flight like this one, with 5 crew (my hypothesis), same setup on the outbound as above:
Pilot 1 does takeoff/landing
Pilots 2 and 3 are in the cockpit during the flight.
Pilots 4 and 5 are not on duty.

All get the 10 hour break on the far end.

On the return:
Pilot 4 does takeoff/landing
Pilots 5 and 1 do the flying
Pilots 2 and 3 are off duty.


Flight attendants - it's probably the same set in both directions, so I'd expect worse service than usual :)

TAP is a pretty barebones carrier. Not much service in Y.

Not that I'm complaining at all - they often price like Norwegian and are unquestionably better than that. Plus free stopovers in Portugal on their North America to Europe fares...even the rock-bottom fares that are sometimes around $200 each way.

I don't know what they're like in J - only that I get decent email offers from them. I can rough it in Y for an East Coast to Lisbon flight. Wouldn't want to do 13 hours if I could avoid it though.

So it’s like flying anywhere with departing airport around 11p-ish and arriving at 6a-ish. Slumber is affected and it still works out fine.

All a moot point. TP has 2 flights to SFO in November. Nothing else until the end of March.