TAP Air Portugal has grown an incredible amount in North America in the past few years, and the airline has just announced two new North American routes for 2020.

Both of these routes will be flown by TAP Air Portugal’s fuel efficient new A321LR aircraft, which have a total of 171 seats, including 16 business class seats and 155 economy seats. You can read a review of TAP’s A321LR business class between Porto and Newark here. The airline has a total of 14 of these planes on order.

TAP Air Portugal’s A321LR business class

So, what are the new routes?

TAP Air Portugal Launching Boston to Azores Route

I’m really excited about this one. In the summer of 2020, TAP Air Portugal will launch a new route between Boston and Ponta Delgada in the Azores. We don’t yet know the exact frequencies or when the route will launch, but I’d say this is a very exciting development:

  • This follows Delta recently announcing they’d end their seasonal New York to Ponta Delgada route in the summer of 2020
  • This will complement TAP’s Boston to Lisbon route
  • I’m a bit surprised to see this, given that TAP codeshares with Azores Airlines, and they also operate the route

Azores Airlines A321neo

This is such a nice development for anyone looking to fly to the Azores, since it means you can fly year-round in a flat bed between the US and the Azores. It also means that you can fly between Ponta Delgada and Lisbon in flat beds, which wasn’t previously possible. The airline will be increasing daily frequencies between Lisbon and Ponta Delgada from four to five with these changes.


TAP Air Portugal’s A321LR business class

While Azores Airlines also has A321s, their premium seats are more similar to domestic first class seats than real business class seats.

TAP Air Portugal Launching Montreal To Lisbon Route

In the summer of 2020 TAP Air Portugal will launch a new 6x weekly service between Lisbon and Montreal. This will represent TAP’s second destination in Canada, after Toronto.

We don’t yet have the exact schedule for the route or the launch date, but it’s expected that it will go on sale on November 25, 2019.

TAP’s Impressive North America Growth

It really is amazing the extent to which TAP has grown in North America in recent years. For example, this past summer alone, TAP added flights to Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington.

The airline has gone from operating three routes to North America in 2015, to operating 11 in 2020. That means they’ll have as many routes to North America as to Brazil.

TAP will operate 82 weekly frequencies in the North American market next year, compared to 16 weekly frequencies in 2015.

This spring the airline indicated that they’d add flights to Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, and Montreal in 2020, so I’m curious if those other three routes still come to fruition (which is a possibility, I’d say).

Bottom Line

TAP Air Portugal is known for their very attractive transatlantic fares (including in business class), so I love to see them expand. These two new routes are great — the Montreal route will bring more low cost options to Canada, like the Boston to Ponta Delgada route will provide a year-round way to fly between Boston and the Azores in a flat bed.

Neither of these routes are on sale yet, but should be soon.

What do you make of TAP’s new 2020 transatlantic routes?

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