TAP Portugal

GIG-LIS-A330-200. An old ones (once Swissair). Seats are very new and very comfortable but inflight entertainment dates from last century. Note for an extremely friendly staff. Food was very pleasant however Portuguese selection of wines was poor. Portugal has much better wines that deserve to be served. No French Champagne. An acid Sparkling wine. Late take off on-time at arrival. Luggage very quick.

I flew GIG-LIS-PRG and GVA-LIS-SSA between June in July and 3 out of these 4 flights were delayed. The first delayed flight from Rio to Lisbon had a delay of 4 hours. From the airport display (on June 14) it was the only delayed international flight that night. The last flight from Salvador to Rio on July 5 delayed at least one hour. The third flight to Geneva to Lisbon on July 4 was my worst flight ever. TAP managed again to have the only delayed flight in the display gave up the flight to a Spanish company (Swift air) that had a terrible flight service and very outdated aircraft (some baggage compartments didn't close properly). We had problems in the arrival in Lisbon as well. After all I planned to leave the airport by 1PM and take a tour in Lisbon but thanks to TAP this happened at 4pm.

We flew from London Heathrow at the start of our holidays and flight was 35 minutes late. On the return journey we flew from Porto to Lisbon 30 minutes late and from Lisbon to London Heathrow 45 minutes late. Need I say more.

London - Lisbon Lisbon - Miami. Delays all the way there with no communication just sitting waiting. Delays all the way home with no communication. No in-flight entertaining (broken "unable to reset as the one staff member who could do it was off on leave) so no inflight entertainment travelling with four children! Nightmare. Food/snacks were good but would never use them again.

Flew TAP from Newark to Lisbon. Left on schedule. Nice flight attendants. The only problem I had was they had no cups in the lavatories and I went in there with my bag to take medication but no cups for water. I exited and asked flight attendant that there were no cups in the bathroom she stated they did not provide cups in the lavatories. Strange. The food was the worst airline food I have had and I could not eat it. I only ate the dessert. My return from Lisbon to Newark was a nightmare. Checked out of hotel for 2.45pm departure only to be told at ticket counter that flight was 8 hours late with expected departure at 10pm no reason for delay was given even though I asked. Was told to go to customer service counter and was given meal coupon. So needless to say I spent the whole day in Lisbon airport and half the night. The departure was 10.20pm there was no order at gate hundreds of people just standing around waiting. No place to sit had to stand. It was a nightmare. Finally boarded and took off. Once again the meal was terrible I could not eat it so went hungry. Flight attendant offered cod or "meat". I asked what kind of meat and got nothing but a strange look. Overall experience was a bad one.

Up until now I've not had a list of airlines to absolutely avoid in the future. Congratulations TAP - you are the first on that list. Never have I experienced such ridiculous service or felt so uncomfortable on a flight. Flying from London to Recife via Lisbon and back from Rio to London via Lisbon every single one of the flights was delayed by at least an hour. Crazy enough though I think we were the 'lucky' ones as on the outgoing leg most of the TAP flights on the Lisbon departure board were delayed by 5+ hours. What is going on?! There was absolutely no entertainment from Lisbon to Recife either and the leg room was terrible making the flight seem like an eternity. In addition the food was just awful. Never again will I fly with this company - I will pay a lot more to avoid it.

Lisbon-Malaga and return (TAP 1076/1079) end of June and beginning of July. The first leg of the flight was fine in a Beechcraft 1900D with nineteen seats. The only "drama" was watching our fellow passengers when they had a good look at the kind of plane they were using for the trip. No problems at all and flight arrived on scheduled. Unfortunately in the return trip they managed to have a delay of three hours on a flight that only last one hour and fifteen minutes in a ATR 72 from Helitt. The official reason was that the flight crew had exceeded their flight times.

Flew from Malaga to Lisbon on TP 1077 June 23rd 2014 and paid an excess luggage fee of 150 euros. After arrival in Lisbon waited for luggage to come down luggage carousel and only 1 piece of luggage not mine came down. Was told by TAP representative that luggage was not loaded onto this aircraft due to weight restrictions and to place a lost luggage claim. Late Wednesday night June 25th the luggage finally arrived at my hotel in Lisbon after being routed from Malaga to Frankfurt and then to Lisbon. Totally unacceptable service.

FNC-LIS-AGP-LIS-FNC. First flight took off on time though there was a passenger in front of me who had her seat fully reclined so my flight was a nightmare and even lost my sandwich because I couldn't even spread my arms. The cabin crew saw this but did nothing. Flight LIS-AGP was late by half an hour this was their inaugural flight using ATR 42 on the route which they used a Beechcraft 1900 before but if you didn't know you wouldn't notice it. The flight AGP-LIS was late by 2 hours and almost lost the connecting flight LIS-FNC. AGP-LIS had the most appalling flight attendant I can't understand why TAP would pay a salary to have people like him who would be better driving a truck than hosting passengers. He just didn't care. On the flight LIS-FNC we were late by 1h and a half plus they emailed me a week before to say the flight had been rescheduled. Ended up flying more time than usual due to high winds in Madeira. However the food on all flights were quite good indeed. All in all the very usual mediocre service you get from TAP.

Flew from USA to Europe round-trip 4 flights as connection through Lisbon. First flight the Atlantic portion they ran out of soap in the bathroom and the last hours of the flight some toilets not working/flushing. One of our seats was broken and would recline the adjacent passenger's screen was not working so he would look across the aisle at another screen. We were about 2 hours delayed so while we didn't miss our connections others on board did. The return flight better except again no soap in the bathroom. The entertainment on the screen was terrible unless you consider one war movie and the following movie Mulan good choices for an 8 hour flight. The flight left timely although the other passengers (about 5) we spoke to said their other flights were late. The food was fair/good. Would avoid this airline for future travels.