NEWS IN BRIEF
TAP launches a new route to Canada’s largest city Report & Photos by Luis Aparicio
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, as well as 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 the TO-LIS flights,” said Fernando Pinto, president of TAP. He is pleased with the numbers indicating that the new 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 descents. TAP has grown substantially since its privatization 28% growth this year compared to last year.”
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.
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
TAP’s team feels confident the new Lisbon-Toronto route will be a success.
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.