TAP launches a new route to Canada’s largest city
By Luis Aparício
(Photo 1) Ribbon Cutting Ceremony: Fernando Pinto, president of TAP (right), Mariana Vieira da Silva, Assistant Secretary of State to the Prime Minister and Scott Collier, Vice-President, Commercial & Terminal Services of the Greater Toronto Airports.
TAP: Inaugural flight
TAP Portugal Airline started flying between Lisbon and Toronto on June 10th. The new service is among four new destinations inaugurated on Portugal Day, including Stuttgart in Germany and Gran Canaria and Alicante in Spain. The Portuguese national airline will be inaugurating 11 new destinations this year.
“We already have 38,000 reservations for this flight,” said Fernando Pinto, president of TAP. He is pleased with the numbers indicating that the new Lisbon-Toronto route is a success and has come to stay, adding that “it has a lot to do with the attractiveness of Lisbon and Portugal and also with this huge Canadian connection with 550,000 Portuguese and people of Portuguese descent. TAP has grown substantially since its privatization – 28% growth this year compared to last year.”
(Photo 2) – TAP’s team feels confident the new Lisbon-Toronto route will be a success.
Investment in Toronto
The Assistant Secretary of State to the Prime Minister, Mariana Vieira da Silva, who attended TAP’s inaugural ceremony, said that this is a “great moment that also represents very well the effort toward rapprochement between the two countries”, which the Portuguese government “has also been trying to build between the Portuguese community in Canada and Portugal.”
With the Lisbon-Toronto route, TAP now has 35 weekly flights to North America, twice as many flights when compared to the same period in 2015, when the airline operated 16 weekly flights.
Nonstop service between Lisbon and Toronto will operate five flights weekly on Saturdays, Sundays, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. The flights depart from Lisbon at 6:45pm and arrive in Toronto at 10 pm, local time, and return from Toronto at 11.55 pm arriving in Lisbon at 12.15 pm of the following day.
