TAP Portugal launched its new ‘lie-flat business class’ round-trip service between Boston and Lisbon over the weekend – featuring the latest in interior travel chic on an Airbus A330.
The service is the first of two to start running between Portugal and the United States this summer.
The next is due to begin on July 1, connecting the capital with New York’s JFK.
Said TAP co-owner David Neeleman, this is a “big thing” for the expanding airline – though it is not ‘new’.
“We’re definitely playing catch-up,” he said of the company’s new executive class level of comfort. “Pretty much all of our competitors have already made the switch.”
For now, TAP will only offer these swanky new interiors on their Lisbon-US flights. Other plans in the long-haul fleet are to be ‘retrofitted and phased into service next year”, reports USA Today, quoting Neeleman as saying that Portugal’s still State majority-owned airline will be a “very competitive product” by the end of the first quarter of 2017.
