TAP Air Portugal, Portugal’s national carrier, will be grounding all A330ceos and the majority of its Airbus A320 family jets. This comes as the carrier announces significant cuts to its network to deal with the coronavirus crisis. The latest move follows similar announcements from the Lufthansa Group, Ryanair and Volotea among others.
In a press release dated 19 March, 2020, the carrier explained how it would reduce its operations and subsequently cut a ‘large part’ of its fleet.
TAP Air Portugal’s CEO, Antonoaldo Neves, said that they “are working on the continuity of our business, confident that we will return soon to our usual pace of activity, always focusing on the future, sustainability and growth of our TAP. We thank our employees for their commitment and sense of mission at a time when everyone has done their best to take care of our customers and of Portugal.”
From 23 March until 19 April, TAP Air Portugal will ground its Airbus A330ceos and Airbus A320 family jets – with the exception of the A321LR. All European services will be operated by the Embraer E190. The latest announcement demonstrates the significant drop in demand due to the spread of the coronavirus. All the carrier’s Airbus A330-200s have already been removed from service.
During this period, however, the airline will only operate a limited number of flights to Sao Paulo (A330-900), Rio de Janeiro (A330-900), Newark (A330-900), Boston (A321LR), Toronto (A321LR) and Miami (A330-900) for its long-haul flights. As for its European network, the carrier will fly to Brussels, Geneva, Frankfurt, London, Paris and Amsterdam under a significantly reduced timetable. Domestically speaking, TAP Air Portugal will link Lisbon with Porto, Funchal, Ponta Delgada and Terceira. In other words, all flights from Porto are suspended, except for the link to Lisbon.
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