written by on 16/11/2011
My family flew with Tap Portugal from Oslo to Natal (Brazil) with a stopover in Lisbon. When we came to the airport we tried to get seats together as we are a family travelling. They did not want to help us with this. It is the first time I've experienced such unfriendly staff on an airport and I travel a lot. Both long-haul and within Europe. Our family was spread around in different parts of the plane (even though we were on the same booking) and weirdly we had people travelling alone in between us. The people in between us offered to change seats so that our family of 8 could sit together. A member of the cabin crew openly rolled her eyes at me when I was changing seats. The legspace was by far the smallest I have ever experienced. As we are a family of very tall people we all had to use the isle to fit our legs. On long hauls with Continental, British Airways and Air Canada I have never had problems with legspace but with TAP Portugal we could simply not fit! During the flight we wanted to stand up and move our legs as the crammed leg space left us feeling quite uncomfortable. A strickt and rude member of cabin crew told us to get seated immediately, this even though it was in the middle of the flight, and not during taxi, take-off or landing. There were no turbulence either so I don't understand why the cabin crew demanded us to sit down. The cabin crew only came with drinks twice during the flight. Only twice on a long haul! Again, this is half of what you get with other European companies like British Airways, Lufthansa etc. (Lufthansa serves beverage 3 times with trolley on European flights on 2-3 hours and comes several times with juice and water on trays for those who wants it). We were thirsty and pressed the button to get cabin crew to our seats, but no cabin crew came! With this by far being the worst long haul experience I have had it seems like a minor annoyance, but the in–flight entertainment was not interactive, which made it impossible to pause the film you were watching. The outbound flight was not surprisingly delayed by an hour. On the inbound flight different members of our family flew on different days.Two of the three of the different flights we had back to Europe were delayed. This left three of our family members (mother, father and son on 2 years) stuck in Lisbon as the flight from Brazil was delayed and they didn't make their connecting flight back to Oslo. I was and am surprised/in shock, how this airline can be a member of star alliance when it feels like flying with Ryanair. It was a big annoyance on our long planned family trip and I do not recommend TAP Portugal to anyone.
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