TAP Adds Berlin and Turin to its European Operations

TAP Portugal is to introduce new direct flights to Berlin and Turin from its Lisbon base during the Northern Summer 2012 schedules. The Portuguese national carrier and Star Alliance member will introduce a four times weekly service to the Italian city of Turin from June 3, 2012 and a five times weekly link to the new Willy Brandt Brandenburg Airport in the German capital Berlin from June 5, 2012.

TAP already has a strong presence in the Italian market and with the addition of Turin to its network will offer 93 weekly flights from Portugal with direct services to five Italian cities. The airline currently offers four daily flights from Lisbon to Rome, alongside 26 weekly services to Milan and daily links to Bologna and Venice. These are supplemented by twice daily flights from Porto to Milan and daily flights from the Portuguese city to Rome.

According to the airline’s own statistics it transported a total of 764,000 passengers between Portugal and Italy during the first eleven months of this year, a 12.8% per cent growth on the same period the previous year. There are currently no direct services between Lisbon and Turin but an estimated 4,000 O&D passengers travelled between the Portuguese capital and the Italian city, which is the capital of the Piedmont region and a major cultural and business centre in the North East of the country.

The new link to Berlin will bring TAP’s German network to 60 flights per week and will complement its existing services to Frankfurt (21 flights per week), Munich (14 flights per week), Hamburg (13 flights per week) and Düsseldorf (seven flights per week). During the first eleven months of this year it carried 484,000 passengers between Portugal and Germany, according to its own internal traffic data, an 11.5 per cent growth over the same period in 2010.