TAP Air Portugal carried 7.9m passengers in H1 2019, up 4.8% from the previous year. The airline said European routes, excluding Portugal, accounted for the bulk of the increase. In H1, the carrier carried 4.8m passengers on European routes, excluding Portugal, a 4.9% year-over-year increase. On TAP’s North American routes from its Lisbon hub, passenger numbers grew 9.6% YOY to 428,000. The African market saw an 8.5% YOY increase to 586,000 passengers. In Brazil, a major market where TAP serves 10 destinations, traffic dropped 2%, but the most recent months are showing signs of recovery. For example, in June TAP carried 3.4% more passengers on Brazilian routes than in June 2018. TAP, which is on an expansion drive, launched new routes in H1 to Tel Aviv (Israel), Basel (Switzerland), Dublin (Ireland), Chicago O’Hare (Illinois), Washington Dulles (Virginia), San Francisco (California), Naples (Italy) and Tenerife (Spain). In July, new services were launched from Lisbon to Conakry (Guinea) and Porto-Brussels, Belgium.<br/>