TAP Air Portugal Offers Cheap Business Class Prices, Flat Bed Seats, Good Food And Shortcomings

For those of us who pay for our business class and first class travel out of our own pockets, the game has largely changed in the past 30 years.

It used to make sense to be loyal to one or two airlines, and then reap the benefits in terms of various upgrade instruments, from certificates to redeeming points.

With various bonuses, one could have miles leftover for premium cabin tickets to use on vacations as well. The programs from the U.S. carriers were particularly generous.

We all know the new deal. While you can earn miles in many different ways, and funnel credits from alliances into a single program, at the end of the day, the general direction is earnings are based on fares instead of mileage. It’s the same with status.

Simply put, it means that traveling on the cheap earns fewer points, less recognition and fewer perks. It’s no longer about the length of your flight, but how much you pay.

And once you’ve earned the currency? It’s more expensive to redeem tickets at the front of the plane, particularly if you are not flexible.

Redemption levels in many cases are no longer fixed, but follow published fares. The higher the fare, the more points needed for a free ticket as well as the reverse. 

In other words, the game of buying tickets when fares are cheap and redeeming points when they are expensive doesn’t work the way it used to.

Add to that airlines cutting international first class, and as business class seats have improved with various models that turn into fully horizontal beds, many have reduced the number of those seats.

By the same token, there are now a number of viable that weren’t really attractive 20 years ago.  

Turkish Airlines, LOT Polish Airlines, and now TAP Air Portugal come to mind as three airlines that now have modern fleets on transatlantic routes and have built up solid hubs with good connecting options – at least on paper.

They’ve also expanded their reach beyond their traditional routes to the Northeast U.S. making them an option for more people.

After about my fourth or fifth attempt to be let through, I found a staffer who just opened the rope and waived me onwards. I felt like the the steerage passengers on the Titanic begging at the locked gates to get to the lifeboats.

All three happen to be in Star Alliance, meaning if you play with United Airlines as your domestic carrier, you can earn in MileagePlus when you fly with them.

In the case of Turkish, it became well known for its cheap fares to Europe, the Middle East and Africa connecting via Istanbul. For folks on the East Coast, the nine-hour overnight flight on the way there is more restful than say connecting via London, where with tailwinds in the winter, you might have a flying time of less than six hours, so maybe only about three or four hours to sleep between the clanking of service trolleys.

While both LOT and Turkish both have seats that turn into beds, it is the upscale catering from Do & Co and its massive and amenity laden business class lounge in Istanbul that distinguishes the latter.

More recently, TAP has upgraded its fleet getting rid of its older business cabin seats that didn’t recline fully. 

As a proud bottom feeder, TAP was a clear winner for a trip this month from Miami to Stockholm returning from Amsterdam. Although the connections weren’t ideal – three hours on the way over – too long I thought – and too short on the way back – one hour, the price was right.

As a quick side example – and another reason I’m not sure loyalty pays if you are buying premium tickets – in December for my trip to Nice, American Airlines connecting to British Airways was the winner in terms of lowest business class fare.

Back to TAP. I was curious if an airline that was never particularly well regarded for service (The joke used to be its initials stood for Try Another Plane. It’s actually Transportes Aereos Portugueses) could make a better impression with new planes and better seats.

Some of it, of course, is not down entirely to the airline. Calling the F Concourse at Miami Internationa Airport where TAP flights depart Third World would be insulting to airports in the Third World.

While American Airlines and Delta Airlines both have shiny new gate areas, the property TAP uses doesn’t seem to have received much attention. In fact, the lounge it uses, Club America, vaguely reminded me of the old Pan Am Clipper Clubs. I wouldn’t be shocked to learn if it once did service for the world’s most experienced airline, some of the furniture included, certainly a very 80s aesthetic.

Getting to the lounge and gates is also a bit strange. Within the security line is an escalator, so you go up, clear security, then down again. There are no premium or Pre-Check lines. There is Pre-Check light, but you wait in a single line, which thankfully was only about 20 minutes.

I had checked in online, which seemed to indicate I could proceed directly through security to the gate. However, two line guardians who apparently work for TAP wanted me to go to the ticket counter to get my carry-on bag weighed.

Flying business class didn’t seem to make a difference. I have a standard Tumi roller bag by the way. Not convinced they really cared, when I told them my bag was fine, they just waved me through.

I say they worked for TAP because they were also at the gate for boarding, which again was a bit of a zoo, and even with the terminal’s limitations could have been organized better.  

After waiting in line with my digital boarding pass, when it was my turn, I was told I needed to get a paper boarding pass at a separate counter near the gate. A few minutes of clicking and I had a new document for both my flight to Lisbon and onwards to Stockholm and was back in line.

I’ve flown business class on TAP a number of times – for the fares, not the seats. With new configurations, I did my research reading some of the blogs that publish reviews of various airlines, including The Points Guy, Flight Report, Flyertalk, Sam Chui, and a few others.

I was curious if some seats were better than others, and what I can say is that I think I made a good choice with 9K, the last row in the business cabin.

Seats are in a 1x2x1 arrangement, meaning you don’t have to climb over anyone to get out. The single seats are either flush to the window, or facing the aisle.

I didn’t see any discernible difference in the foot cubbies, so being against the cabin wall provided a bit more privacy, although this row has only one window instead of two.

Others seem to agree as these seats that go first, so after booking I had to go back a few times before I was able to secure one for the outbound flight.

Seats in the middle are either side-by-side, or separated and flush to the aisle, providing an option for single travelers as well as couples.

The dividers between seat rows aren’t particularly high. I felt a bit like a rooster peering out across the cabin. And while the units are solid, I liked the idea that there wasn’t somebody behind me grabbing on the shell of my seat when getting up.

Based on my tray table, I can imagine if you had a seat behind you, you would feel when it gets shoved back into its storage position.

As a bed, once fully flat, it was surprisingly more comfortable than I thought it would be, although if you are more than six feet tall that might not be the case.

If you sleep on your back it’s fine, and I slept well enough on my side. If you are somebody who moves around when you are sleeping, I can see not liking these seats.

There was a slightly oversized pillow and duvet. You also get a fairly standard amenity kit. There are several storage containers as well, so safe places to store eyeglasses or your smartphone while you are asleep.

Surprisingly, the connectivity on my outbound flight, a new Airbus A300-900neo, was limited to free text with carrier rates. I quickly got an AT&T spending alert warning me that using the service would entail extra charges, so be careful. Within minutes I got a follow up alert saying I had spent over $100!

The return flight had full WiFi, but you can’t buy it for a specific time period or the entire flight, but instead only increments of data usage. My 500MB for $58 ran out annoyingly fast although I couldn’t tell what I was doing that was using so much bandwidth.

Before departure, there is the typical choice of champagne, orange juice or water. After takeoff some cold nuts and a hot towel followed by a bar cart.

For dinner, there’s an appetizer – on this flight a sweet corn flan with herb-marinated shrimp and smoked tomatoes – as well as a soup – carrot and ginger – served together. Both were very good.

There were also a couple passes of warm bread rolls. On the return it was rustic bread slices. The quality was excellent in both instances.

There were three choices for the main course and my Cod Filet with Thai Mushroom Sauce was tasty, although the purple potatoes were tasteless.

There was a nice wine selection focused on Portugal and the Vale de Cavalos was a solid fully bodied choice, but this is purely the opinion of a non-expert.

Breakfast is a cold affair, which I passed on, however, like my airport experience, if you want a particular outcome with TAP, my recommendation is to be pleasantly forceful.

For example, when I woke up, I popped to the galley to ask for coffee. The first answer was that it would be served during breakfast in a half hour. I simply said, “Can I get mine now, please.”

The flight attendant’s reaction was to seem a bit annoyed, and when it came, I said for no particular reason gracias instead of thank you, and I was told, “It’s Obrigado in Portuguese,” in a New York style aggressively friendly version of Rosetta Stone.

Of course, it’s difficult to give a fair assessment on a couple of flights, which is why it’s a good idea to read various reviews.

You won’t confuse TAP’s business class with Singapore Airlines or Qatar Airways, however, on my four flights, their planes were clean and there weren’t crumbs in my seat (note to Alex Cruz and Doug Parker).

A low point was connecting in Lisbon. There is no premium line for immigration or security screening, and on this morning the line was one of the longest I’ve seen anywhere – ever.

Even with an hour and twenty minutes to connect despite the delay, I wasn’t optimistic, and to boot, there is only one flight per day to Stockholm.

While oneworld, particularly American and British Airways, do a really good job helping with tight connections, a true stress reducer, TAP’s ground personnel didn’t even pretend to care. 

After being shuffled into the line, I came to understand that they would come around and call your destination. As best I could make out, that doesn’t happen until the boarding time for your flight.

Nothing says poor operational management like making tired travelers, including families and the elderly, dash for a connection in an unfamiliar airport for no good reason.

While it was clear I wasn’t going to come close to making it through the immigration line by my boarding time, the answer was to wait in line until I was called. However, there really wasn’t much effort to help people anyway.

One person from time to time would wander near the end of this huge line calling out various cities in a way you couldn’t really understand what was being said while several colleagues stood around chatting amongst themselves.

In the meantime, there was nobody in the short connections channel, probably because one couldn’t hear what flights were being called. Several families in line near me were in tears.

After about my fourth or fifth attempt to be let through, I found a staffer who just opened the rope and waived me onwards. I felt like the the steerage passengers on the Titanic begging at the locked gates to get to the lifeboats.

I was glad that I had been a pest instead of just standing around waiting for my fate as there was still another stop for screening, although after that it was pretty straightforward.

Before I left Miami, I had been checking the inbound flight, which instead of landing on schedule just before 3 PM was tracking to land at around 4:40 PM, about five minutes before scheduled departure.

TAP didn’t post the delay on its website until around four o’clock when I was already at the airport. And likewise, when I got to the gate for my 8:50 AM departure in Lisbon, the flight was showing on time.

Since it was a bus gate, at about 8:35 AM I asked the agent when we would be boarding. She told me the flight was landing in five minutes, so clearly a delay despite no announcements. To give credit, by 9 AM we were on our way to the plane.

Don’t confuse TAP with Emirates either. There is no dedicated business class bus. It was the typical cattle call, and while we had to wait for the cleaners to finish when we arrived at our plane – note again to Alex Cruz and Doug Parker – the interior of the A320neo was spotless.

And another note to the BA CEO: While TAP has typical European business class – coach seats with the middle seat left open – there is actually very good legroom, not the Ryanair spacing the world’s formerly favorite airline now offers.

There is both a smartphone charger and international power point for each seat. That said, there was no WiFi or even text messages, a real miss for a newly delivered jet.

Flight attendants were super friendly and the breakfast – steak and eggs, fresh fruit, and warm rolls or croissants – was good in quality.

My trip back, which started in Amsterdam, included just an hour to connect in Lisbon, so I was a bit concerned. However, this time we arrived 15 minutes early and the gate was about 20 yards from the escalators that lead up to the lounge.

Figuring I might have time, I went up, and after having my digital boarding pass swiped, I was invited in.

I then asked what time I should leave the lounge, and the attendant asked where I was traveling to, so clearly she didn’t pay attention when she checked me in. After looking up Miami, she advised me since I would need to clear immigration, I should leave right away.

This time passport control was like an abandoned shopping mall, and I was at the gate about 10 minutes later.

As for the nine-hour flight to Miami, it confirmed to me that TAP does a really good job with its food. A cod stew was excellent as was the cauliflower soup, ice cream and cheese, although the latter were both served out of plastic containers.

Service was fine, but after the lights went out there were no beverage passes through the cabin, at least while I was awake, which was most of the flight. When I visited the galley to use the toilets, there were no snacks out, just a bottle of water and plastic cups in the area dividing business and economy class.

In one case the two flight attendants continued their conversation, and in the other, she just sat on the jump seat engaged in a video game on her phone. In neither case was I offered anything to drink, or anything.

Landing back in Miami, to clear immigrations and customs we had to walk from the end of the F pier to the D area where American Airlines flights arrive. My iPhone showed is as just over three-quarters of a mile.

What’s the verdict?

If you want the luxury of Qatar Airways’ Q Suites, you’ll be let down.

If you want a well thought out premium transfer experience for your connection, again, take a pass on TAP.

If you’re OK with combination of friendly and motivated employees, as well as those whose personalities are a better match for loading cargo, TAP will fit the bill.

On the plus side is good food and comfortable seats, both on the long haul and European fleet, not something many other carriers match.

Above my seat on both transatlantic flights was a store of extra pillows and blankets. I like a couple extra pillows if they are available, so I appreciated this. Many airlines seem to match them one for one so don’t have extras.

On both of the long-haul flights, they served from front to back of the cabin, and in both cases they had run out of the steak, which wouldn’t have been my choice anyway. If you care, there is apparently an option to pre-order online.

According to TAP’s CEO, Antonoaldo Neves writing in its magazine, the airline now has 82 weekly flights to North America, up from just 16 five years ago. Average fleet age also dropped to just 3.9 years today from 15 years old as recently as 2018.

While Lisbon’s terminal, despite parts being relatively new, is a maze of dimly lit halls and bus station style architecture, TAP seems to consistently offer low fares to Europe.  

As with my December trip, it’s also more common now to see the major players selling deeply discounted business class tickets during slow periods.

In terms of other factors, I should add TAP doesn’t provide lounges for business class passengers at all at JFK in New York, Washington Dulles, San Francisco, or a number of European airports.

For this trip, I paid $2,703 through Virtuoso’s Skylark Travel. Next time, if TAP has a significantly lower price, I would book business class with them. However, the WiFi pricing structure and airport experiences in Miami and Lisbon were just a bit too miserable to get excited about this airline otherwise.