Airline: TAP Air Portugal
Flight #: TP1364
Route: LIS-LHR
Class: Economy
Seat: 7A 11A
Date: Thursday 8th February 2024
After three days in exploring the Portuguese capital (read about that here and here) it was time to head home onboard a TAP Air Portugal flight from Lisbon to London Heathrow. Unfortunately I was still feeling the after effects of my spate of food poisoning and so wasn’t really ‘with it’ for the flight and as such this will be a relatively short post.
With just hand luggage for the trip and having been provided our return boarding cards when we checked in at Heathrow, we were able to head straight to security. We’d arrived at the airport about two and a half hours before the flight and it was a good job we had because security was chaotic. There were nowhere near enough lanes open for the amount of passengers head through and the whole process just seemed to be poorly managed.
Generally, I wasn’t overly impressed with Lisbon airport as despite the apparent vast size of the terminal, there are areas that seemed cramped. For example, the central departure lounge area was crowded and did not seem big enough, whereas on our arrival, the passport control area seemed excessively large and was mostly empty. From my experience Lisbon also seemed to have large areas of the terminal that lacked natural light, including the central departure lounge.
Deciding to try and find somewhere a bit more relaxing and peaceful than the main departure lounge, we headed upstairs to the ANA lounge (ANA as in the Portuguese Airport’s authority, not the Asian airline) which I was able to get access to via my bank. The lounge was very spacious and despite being busy didn’t seem crowded, and a darkened area with projected TV channels was our area of choosing to wait out the time before departure.
Our gate was announced about 35 minutes before departure, leading to a slightly rushed trek through the airport and passport control to gate N47. Annoyingly despite this rush and the flight showing as ‘boarding’, this was another case of #BoardingNotBoarding and so we could have taken our time a bit more and still had plenty of time.
Our aircraft for the flight was CS-TJO, a four and half year old Airbus A320neo that can seat up to 221 passengers. Thankfully the flight was only half full and we ended up with a row of seats to ourselves, giving us space to spread out and for me to catch up on some sleep without risking falling asleep on a stranger. As with most ‘full service’ airlines, TAP has the cabin installed so the amount of Business class seating is flexible and seemingly high bookings led to our seats being changed from row 7 to row 11.
With boarding complete in plenty of time for an on time departure, it was announced that unfortunately we would have a 25-minute ground delay owing to ATC restrictions at London Heathrow. Thankfully this ended up just being 11 minutes delay and we pushed back at 1616, starting our taxi four minutes later at 1620. A short taxi later, we took off from Lisbon’s runway 20 at 1627, departing over the city although unfortunately any views were blocked by low clouds.
Immediately after take-off we had a 160° turn to the left, to take us north-east out of Portuguese airspace towards the Spanish city of Valladolid. As we approached the border around 20 minutes after take-off the flight crew announced we had reached our cruising altitude of 11,000m (36,000ft) and that’s about all of the flight I remember as I dozed on and off for the remainder of the flight.
Reviewing the flight on flightradar24, we turned slightly more to the north before reaching Valladolid, crossing the Spanish coast to the west of Santander before flying over the Bay of Biscay. The coast of Brittany was crossed near Vannes and again to the west of Saint Malo before our decent began just after we’d flew over the tip of the Cherbourg peninsula. We crossed the English coast above Portsmouth and with Heathrow on westerly operations, managed to avoid the Ockham holding pattern, heading over Epsom and Croydon before lining up for final approach over the city, landing at 1828, 27 minutes early.
Unfortunately, as I mentioned at the start, I wasn’t really ‘with it’ for this flight and therefore the review is a bit lacking. However, whilst passing through Lisbon airport was not necessarily a great experience, both of my flights with TAP have been pleasant, and the crews have been great. Given Lisbon airport is a hurdle to be faced whoever you fly with, TAP is certainly a good option for visiting Portugal.
Lounge 0*
Seat/Facilities 3*
Food 3*
Service 5*
Punctuality 5*
Overall Rating 16/25 (read about my rating system here!)
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