Portuguese airline TAP Air Portugal is set to resume select international services starting this June. The news, first mentioned by Reuters, will see the airline resume a handful of its international operations, including those to Italy, Spain, and more.

tap-portugal
TAP Portugal's largest aircraft is the Airbus A330-900. Photo: TAP

Additional destinations from July

While the airline has been operating a skeleton network of flights recently to the cities of Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, London, and Paris, the airline's schedule opens up a lot more in June and July.

During the month of June, TAP will resume the following services:

  • A twice-weekly service from Lisbon to Newark.
  • Once per week flights to the African cities of Maputo (Mozambique) and Luanda (Angola).

Then, during July, the airline plans to resume a long list of services including:

  • The Brazilian cities of Recife and Fortaleza.
  • Boston, Toronto, and Miami in North America.
  • And a long list of cities throughout Western Europe, including Barcelona, Madrid, Milan, and Rome.
TAP A321LR takeoff
TAP's A321LR is the most recent narrowbody addition to the fleet. Photo: Airbus

A big focus on Spain and Italy

While many of TAP's service resumptions two to seven weekly flights, destinations in Spain and Italy will see a considerable boost to frequency. In fact, Madrid, Barcelona, Milan, and Rome will all see 14 weekly services from Lisbon. This is quite a huge change from no service at all.

"Now is the perfect time to book that journey that lately you have been planning and longing for." -TAP Air Portugal website

Italy Milan coronavirus
Italy is slowly emerging from strict lockdown, which was imposed over much of April and a portion of May. Photo: Getty Images

TAP 'Clean&Safe'

Like many airlines these days, TAP is changing much of the way it operates flights in the interests of the health and safety of its passengers and employees.

As a result, the airline has introduced a new set of enhanced cleaning procedures and policies under the name TAP Clean&Safe.

At the airport, this includes limits on capacity and a change in food offered at lounge facilities. Onboard, aircraft are deep-cleaned on a daily basis with crews now using PPE. Furthermore, additional flexibility has been included for ticket bookings.

"We want you to know that the entire TAP team is strongly committed to containing the outbreak and ensuring that you travel safely, confidently and flexibly." -TAP Air Portugal website

TAP A330neo
TAP Air Portugal's A330-900 mainly flies transatlantic services. Photo: TAP Air Portugal

Conclusion

While we can certainly hope that these flights will go ahead as planned, it's difficult to say that they are 100% guaranteed going to happen. This is due to the reality that subsequent waves of virus outbreaks may occur, forcing various areas to shut down.

Today, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a stark warning, saying that a second peak could happen. Reported by CNN, the warning came from Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, who says that we are “right in the middle of the first wave, globally," right now. Ryan adds,

“We need to be also cognizant of the fact that the disease can jump up at any time. We cannot make assumptions that just because the disease is on the way down now that it's going to keep going down, and the way to get a number of months to get ready for a second wave – we may get a second peak in this way,”

Therefore, whether or not flights scheduled two months into the future will go ahead will largely depend on the daily actions of residents everywhere to limit the spread of the infection.

When do you think you will travel again? Let us know in the comments.