TAP Portugal Airlines provides good value business-class experience between US, Canada and Portugal. Pros: great, friendly service, wonderful wine selection and excellent awards availability through Star Alliance. Cons: 170 degrees lie flat seats, no Wi-Fi.

Booking

For our tour of the Iberian peninsula, I planned to start in Lisbon and zig zag trough Portugal and Spain, ending up in Barcelona. Flying from Jacksonville, Florida (our home base) optimizing miles for business-class seats, can be a challenge.

However, thanks to the United Airlines easy to use rewards booking website and wide numbers of Star Alliance partners, I was able to get 2 tickets using 70,000 United MileagePlus miles and $9.10 each in taxes, connecting trough Toronto, Canada. YES, $9.10!!!!!!

The same flight if paid in full would easily cost us over $6000.00 per person!!!

Checking-in

After booking the flight, I went on United Airlines website and obtained my reservation number for Tap Air Portugal (go to “my trips”, then choose the reservation you want and click “manage” and under United confirmation number click “view additional confirmation numbers”) and chose our seats as well as filled in traveler’s information (passports, emails, phone number etc.). Tip: f you are not familiar with the aircraft you will be flying SeatGuru is a great source of information on seat selection. Rarely, United website might not list alternative confirmation number. If so, call them directly and request it or use your ticket number listed on the email receipt. Tip: create email folder for your trip, where you store all the reservations and confirmations. Needless to say, after doing all these steps ahead of the time, airport check-in was a breeze.

Lounge

Jacksonville International (JAX) has only one lounge and it belongs to Delta, so we were content with pre flight drink at the airport’s Shula’s restaurant.  Air Canada Express does not have business-class seats on it’s commuter planes, but we were seated in economy plus. It was a short flight, so no big deal. Toronto International (YYZ) requires you to go trough Canadian passport control even for the connecting flights, so we chose longer layover (4 hours). From the time we landed to the time we entered Maple Leaf Air Canada lounge we had 3 hours left. The lounge itself was spacious with 2 areas serving food and drinks. Food choices were adequate: breads, chesses , salads and few warm dishes. Drink choices on the other hand were excellent with variety of beers, wines and hard liqueurs as well as soft drinks, coffee and tea. All self served. The best part was a shower, a feature missing in most US business lounges, that I use often to refresh and relax on long layovers.

Boarding

Boarding was scheduled to begin 45 minutes before departure, but started about 10 minutes late. There was some pre boarding chaos that I anticipated with such a late flight and tired passengers. However, business-class travelers were called in first and I left the mayhem for others to deal with.

Seats

Tap Air Portugal (A330-300) Business-Class has 2-2-2 configuration. Seats are spacious and recline fully but on our flight only to 170 degrees. 180 vs 170 does not make huge difference for most people. My wife who is 5’2″ slept like a baby after champagne and 2 wines skipping a meal and arriving in Lisbon fully refreshed. Me however, I find myself sliding slightly and resting my hips on the middle part of the seat. Let’s face it, nowadays for transatlantic flights, not having a fully flat business class product puts you at a disadvantage, so thumbs down to them on their angled seats.  Needless to say I needed some Port wine to help me find this seat comfortable. As far as storage goes, these seats are not most generous. Fortunately there is plenty overhead bin space to use in the premium cabin, so for take-off and landing I just stored our things there. Seat controls are easily accessible and straight forward.

Entertainment

I’m not a big consumer of the in-flight entertainment opting instead for good book or audiobook. However, I tested TAP Air Portugal system and was quite unimpressed. Choices of movies and TV shows were very basic and there was no need for me to use noise-canceling headphones that were provided. There were international electric plugs for charging and USB ports build in. For a late departure red-eye flight it was adequate.

 

 

 

Amenities

The seats were stocked with a full-size pillow, a thick rolled-up blanket, an amenity kit and noise-cancelling headphones. The amenity kit contained a face mask, socks, a plastic-wrapped toothbrush and toothpaste, plastic-wrapped earplugs, lip balm and face cream. Nice touch was a amenity kit holder with an image of a Sintra Palace outside of Lisbon and socks in Portuguese national colors.

 

 

Food and Service

 

 

 

Two best things about this Tap Air Portugal (A330-300) business-class. Let’s start with service: It was excellent and very friendly, it made my flight. There were 4 flight attendants assigned to the Tap Air Portugal (A330-300) Business-class, which was 1:4 ratio (some seats were empty). Since I love wine, travel and history our flight attended not only suggested some great reds and ports, but gave me plenty of travel tips about Lisbon and Portugal. Tip: don’t be afraid to talk to locals, you can get some of the best “secrets or hacks” that will make your trip special. I started with some Espumante , Portuguese sparkling wine and warm nuts. It was excellent. I wasn’t really hungry after that, my wife was already snoring, but I had to sacrifice for the purpose of this blog. So I went on with crew meal recommendations and copious amount of red wine from Douro Valley, delicious. And yes, I left some room for Port wine, my favorite product of Portugal. That was my desert. In the morning,3.5 hours later, I skipped breakfast and had some coffee and bite of dark chocolate.

Arrival

We arrived at the Lisbon International Airport (LIS)  20 minutes ahead of schedule. It was a bit of a walk to the Passport Control and NON-EU line was full of other arrivals from US and Brazil. However, it was moving fast and we cleared passport and custom control within 25 minute. Airport was clean, signs well marked and finding a taxi stand was not a problem.

Tap Air Portugal (A330-300) business-class bottom line

Availability of rewards seats, booking, food and service: excellent. Entertainment, amenities, lounge, check-in: good. Seats: disappointing.

Conclusion: I would flyTap Air Portugal (A330-300) Business-class only when going to Portugal and in need of direct flight. Once the whole fleet is retrofitted with true 180 degrees lie flat seats, that are used for some US routes and Brazil, then it will be a solid choice.