TAP Air Portugal is boosting its Brazilian connections with the resumption of flights to Salgado Filho International Airport (POA). This facility serves Porto Alegre in the south of the country, and previously handled flights from the Portuguese flag carrier, but these were temporarily suspended earlier in the year due to the impacts of severe flooding. TAP’s Porto Alegre flights will resume in just over four months.
Welcome back
Specifically, as announced this week by the Portuguese national airline, April 1st next year will herald the return of TAP Air Portugal to Porto Alegre. The carrier plans to serve the facility three times a week from its main hub at Humberto Delgado Airport (LIS) in Lisbon, with its aircraft of choice on this transatlantic corridor being the Airbus
A330-900 from the European manufacturer’s modern A330neo series.
Photo: Matheus Obst | Shutterstock
Departing from Lisbon on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, these flights will be, as TAP notes, among the longest in the airline’s network, with a planned block time of 11 hours and 20 minutes. They are scheduled to leave the Portuguese capital city at 13:05, with their arrival in Porto Alegre timed for 20:25 local time. After a 90-minute turnaround, the return leg will depart Porto Alegre at 21:55.
As is common with eastbound flights across the Atlantic, these services will operate on an overnight basis, with their planned arrival into Lisbon scheduled for 12:45 the next day, some 10 hours and 50 minutes later. The flights on the resuming route are already on sale via TAP Air Portugal’s ticketing website, with the Portuguese flag carrier noting that return fares start at €699 ($733.38), including taxes.
TAP’s operational hiatus amounts to almost a year
Salgado Filho Porto Alegre International Airport was in the news for all the wrong reasons earlier this year, when the onset of severe flooding in early May forced the facility to close temporarily. Such was the extent of the excessive surface water at the facility that, as reported by Simple Flying at the time, aircraft were seen ‘floating’ on the apron, with their landing gear completely submerged by water.
During the airport’s closure, select routes were instead served from the Canoas Air Force Base. These flights initially used an on-site makeshift check-in area, although these formalities were able to be completed in the terminal at Porto Alegre again by July. Nonetheless, flights continued to serve the air base, with the first phase of the operational reopening only beginning in October. TAP Air Portugal
states that:
“With the resumption of the offer of direct flights between the southernmost capital of Brazil and Europe, TAP fulfills the commitment it made on the date it was forced to suspend this connection, and is pleased with the reopening of Porto Alegre airport to international flights.”
Photo: Joao Fachetti | Shutterstock
According to Aviation Week, the airport has now fully reopened, following the completion of the second phase of the process on December 16th, thus opening the door for the resumption of TAP’s flights in April after an 11-month hiatus. Porto Alegre is one of 13 Brazilian destinations served by the Portuguese flag carrier, which operates 15 routes to the country from its bases in Lisbon and Porto (OPO).
What’s it like onboard?
As previously mentioned, TAP Air Portugal will be deploying its modern Airbus A330-900 widebodies when it resumes flights on the route between Lisbon and Porto Alegre. According to current fleet data made available by ch-aviation, the Portuguese flag carrier and 
Star Alliance
member presently has 19 of these twinjets at its disposal (with an average age of 5.7 years old), and two more on order.
Data from aeroLOPA shows that TAP Air Portugal favors a two-class configuration on these aircraft, with a total capacity of 298 passengers. Of these, 34 are accommodated in the aircraft’s business class cabin, which occupies the real estate between the first and second door and is configured in a 1-2-1 layout. Meanwhile, the remaining 264 economy class seats are laid out eight abreast in a 2-4-2 setup.
