The Regional Government has called on TAP to increase the connections or seats available on routes to Terceira Island and consider opening new connections to North America.
“The lack of seats on planes is, on the one hand, a good thing, but, on the other hand, it also sometimes causes constraints. I realized that TAP was satisfied with Terceira’s occupancy rates. Bearing in mind that the operation is going very well, which is a very good occupancy rate, I asked them to consider increasing these frequencies or the number of seats,” said the vice president of the Azorean executive, Artur Lima, yesterday.
The governor, who oversees the management of the Lajes Civil Aerogare, met on Thursday evening in Lisbon with the chairman of TAP’s board of directors, Luís Rodrigues, who once led SATA.
When asked yesterday about the meeting, he said that he had no “results” yet but that he had left the meeting “enthusiastic.”
“These are solutions that TAP will study and I came away very enthusiastic because Luís Rodrigues knows the Autonomous Region of the Azores very well, he knows our island reality well, he knows our mobility difficulties well, since he was president of SATA and did an extraordinary job while he was here in terms of mobility,” he said.

Overnight stay in Terceira.
Artur Lima pointed out that the airline “has been operating on the island of Terceira for dozens of years” and is the only one with aircraft staying overnight in Lajes every day during the summer and two days a week during the winter.
“This has made all the difference to the mobility of Azoreans, including sports teams, not only from Terceira, but also from other islands,” he said.
He acknowledged TAP’s limitations but called for more connections or a change of aircraft to accommodate more passengers per flight.
“We are very short of planes and until the end of 2025 TAP cannot acquire new planes because it is in the process of restructuring. I asked the chairman of the board of directors to take into account the increase in overnight stays in Terceira during the winter and also to try […] to increase the frequency to some destinations,” he said.

New Routes to America
The vice president of the Azorean executive also left “the proposal that they study the possibility of operating some new route abroad, namely to North America, the United States, and Canada.”
When asked if TAP could replace SATA, which has announced a reduction in winter flights between Terceira and the United States of America, Artur Lima said he wouldn’t mix one with the other.
“With regard to SATA, the Lajes Civil Airport will make a decision in due course. We had previously held a meeting with the previous SATA board. We haven’t met with this new chairman of the board yet, but we’ll have the opportunity to meet and then we’ll talk about the SATA operation,” he said.

PS criticism
When confronted with criticism from the PS, which warned of a 23% drop in the number of passengers disembarking on Terceira island from foreign flights in the first six months of the year, the vice-president of the executive claimed that many foreigners arrive on the island on flights from Lisbon.
“TAP has the largest network of connections with Europe and can attract passengers from all over Europe, as long as the Azores destination is well promoted in Europe and by the TAP network. Therefore, it’s an excellent way of attracting tourists from abroad without direct flights,” he pointed out, adding that some direct flights abroad operated during the PS’s terms in office between 2020 and 2020 were ‘highly loss-making’ and ‘were SATA’s undoing.’
“What I think would be interesting is to compare the 2019 PS figures with the 2023 figures of this government and even 2024, which is going very well,” he concluded.

in Diário Insular-José Lourenço-director

Note from NOVIDADES: In the past 5 years, many of us in the Portuguese-American community in California have believed that TAP-Air Portugal could undoubtedly have one of its weekly flights do a stopover in Terceira Island from San Francisco and the same from Newark and Boston.

Translated to English as a community outreach program from the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) and the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department (MCLL) as part of Bruma Publication and ADMA (Azores-Diaspora Media Alliance) at California State University, Fresno, PBBI thanks Luso Financial for sponsoring NOVIDADES.