TAP Air Portugal is a useful airline for anyone looking to fly transatlantic. The airline consistently has reasonable fares (both in economy and business class, and also both roundtrip and one-way), and on most tickets they allow a free stopover in Lisbon enroute to your final destination, which is cool.
Continue reading: TAP Air Portugal Launching Flights To Washington Dulles
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Brussels Airlines is also part of the Transatlantic joint venture on top of LH, LX, OS, UA, AC.
Lisbon certainly has an excellent argument for the most pleasant city in Europe for a stopover (and the best food), but its not exactly an easy place to connect, as its a near certainty that your incoming and outgoing flight will require being bussed to and from a remote stand.
I am DCA based so this is good news for me.
Any recommendations regarding which airline has the best miles to book this flight? 140K UA is pretty steep for a short TATL route
While not easy to accumulate but Asiana Club charges only 80,000 miles RT for business class to or from Europe.
It’s good that this leaves later in the evening from IAD. Less competition in the Senator Lounge or the Turkish Lounge, as only the MUC and IST flights leave at that hour.
I believe it would be 63k Avianca Lifemiles to book one way flight in business class from IAD to LIS on the TAP metal.
@TAKHLIQ KHAN
Thanks, Asiana would pass along fuel surcharges though right?
@Jason Z
Yeah Lifemiles isn't too shabby but IMO 126k is good, but not great
Not only IAD, based on their website they are also starting to fly LIS-ORD from June 2019.
Not ideal for connections though as it arrives in Lisbon relatively late (10:50 am).
TAP's web site also shows nonstop service to Chicago as well - can already book tickets.
@Mishas, TP has a decent mid day departures bank at LIS. The beauty of the late arrival at LIS is that it avoids the long lines at immigration that are typical of the early morning.
LIS is a shambles to arrive at! As already mentioned, arriving at a (very) remote stand is a near certainty, with a slow and ponderous bus trip to the terminal. Most times of the day and night the Immigration lines are a horror story, especially if you are mixed in with third-world arriving pax, who seem to all have time-consuming issues with the surly Immig. agents.
Such a contrast to the smaller but slick OPO airport in the north.
I always get amused when I hear Americans talk about the horror stories of immigration lines in other countries. You should try to be a foreigner arriving at Newark.
Yeah...it's a pain but it's not possible to avoid long immigration lines in over saturated airports. In LIS case, the airport is way above its operational limit and it shows. Until they open the second airport in Lisbon in a few years, things will probably get worse. And even then, I don't know if moving the LCCs to that new airport will be enough to make things work well at LIS.
I used UA miles to fly MSY-EWR-LIS; AMS-IAD-MSY and it cost me about 60K total. The EWR to Lisbon was operated by TAP and it was overall a decent airline. The flight time was 6hrs and overall the legroom and the service were decent (not great, but an improvement over UA which I flew from AMS-IAD; half of the plane was empty and still the FA's couldn't be bothered). You can check out my full review of TAP here: https://0504traveller.blogspot.com/2017/02/a-trip-report-tap-portugal-newark-to.html
Portugal, despite being a EU country, is still relatively poor. This is obvious to the average visitor experiencing it's outdated infrastructure, like airports, roads, treacherous footpaths/sidewalks etc. No idea of the state of their schools, health services and public service though. Judging by the grumpiness of their airport-based officials, I would say not good. After decades of authoritarianism, a good service culture is yet to emerge countrywide, even in the private sector.
Hi gleen,
I guess you are talking of 70s Portugal. Despite not being a rich country, Portugal is one of the country with best infrastructures in Europe. Transports, roads, communications,.. That is one of the reason why Its a prefered country for big events, as the web summit. The airport is not good as it’s a quite small for 27 million passengers, the construction of a new airport is about to start but only be ready in about 4 years.
Cheers