TAP Portugal to offer direct flights between Toronto and Lisbon in bid to supplant transatlantic competition

The thick flock of airplanes crossing the North Atlantic daily doesn’t appear to worry TAP Portugal. The airline will begin offering flights between Toronto and Lisbon 5 times a week in June, betting in part that Lisbon’s proximity to North America will help it siphon off some of the passengers who now travel to Portugal via London or other major European hubs. Carlos Paneiro, the company’s VP of sales for North and Central America, said: “It’s [Lisbon] not as crowded as Heathrow or Charles de Gaulle. It’s not huge, so it’s one more asset we have in order to convince Canadians to choose TAP.” Restoring service to Toronto, a destination abandoned during the mid-1990s, comes following a series of transactions that has turned the former wholly-owned govt airline into one with shared ownership. <br/>