Unfortunately my experience with TAP are not very favourable.
Taking a flight from Heathrow to Rio de Janeiro, we had a bad experience from before the check-in.
Arriving at the standard 3 hours before the flight, we were astonished to have to wait an hour before the TAP check-in staff even started to get the desks ready for people to start checking in. By this point, there was already a crowd forming. It was certainly not a polite queue, but the start of a mob.
When the TAP staff did start to put out the ropes, they were very rude, and never once tried to obtain any order, and just let people push their way forwards, infront of those of us who had been waiting now for over 90 minutes.
After yet more waiting we eventually got our boarding passes and the bags checked in. One of our bags was over weight - and the guy did not seem to care at all. His words were "Ah.
Ok. Whatever."
Unfortunately, due to the slowness of the check-in, we were not able to relax at all before finding that they were calling passengers to board the plane 30 minutes earlier than we were just told - so as soon as we got through security we had to head straight to the plane.
But... We were then told (after rushing the length of the terminal) that there would be a 1 hour delay. Ridiculous.
Eventually, we got onto the plane that would take us to Porto, where we would change planes for the rest of our journey to Brazil.
The flight was uncomfortable, with no entertainment, except a very bad "drop-down" television at the very front, which was in a crackly black-and-white.
As soon as we landed at Porto there were even more problems. The plane was nowhere near the terminal, so we had to get onto small cramped buses - taken to the terminal - went through security (which included everyone being padded down) - and then rushed towards the gate for the next flight - with only 5 minutes to spare...
What a shock to find that we where then bundled back onto the same bus we were just on, and taken to a plane next to the one we just left!
All the time, the ground-crew in Portugal were very rude and abrupt with all non-Portuguese. Even the Brazilians were not treated very well. It was not pleasant.
Once we were settled onto our main flight, we noticed exactly where we were placed - next to the toilets - despite specifically asking to NOT be near the toilets, and somewhere, such as the bulk-head, so I could have a bit of extra leg-room, due to a knee operation I'd had a few weeks before.
The flight was about 11 hours. And it seemed like the toilet was broken. The stench was terrible, and when we spoke to the flight crew about it, they simply shrugged it off and said it was just because the plane was very old.
Entertainment on the main flight consisted of 5 radio stations, one of which did not work, plus yet more of these drop-down TV's. I was very alarmed by this, as TAP had been advertising "new, modern fleet of planes, with comfort and style".
*ahem*
Sorry, but there was nothing comfortable or stylish about the flights we had. These monster televisions that were dangling above peoples heads looked dangerous. Everytime there was turbulence (which seemed to be about 9 hours of this 11 hour flight) the TV's wobbled and shook so much that one of them stopped working. And the other one close enough to view was flickering between colour and back-and-white.
The food was "okay". I was supposed to have a veggie meal set aside for me - however... Apparently TAP do not provide vegetarian meals, ever. This is what the flight attendant told me, as she tried to force me to have some chicken. Luckily we found they had a gnocchi with tomato sauce (they did not know that gnocchi is just potato!) so I had that, and it was "okay". Certainly nothing special.
During the flight, we were only offered drinks with the meals, so it was lucky we had a bottle of water with us.
Also, no one except us and pilot seemed to care about the "seatbelts" signs. The flight attendants just walking and standing in the aisles, serving coffee without caring if they spilt anything on anyone (which they did...)
When finally arriving at our destination, we were glad to get off the plane. The flight crew never bothered to say anything like "thank you, good bye" - but just glared at us and everyone else.
To be honest, the best thing about the flight was to land in Rio and have the bags already on the conveyor belts by the time we got through immigration. And that was the main ground-crew of the airport rather than the TAP staff..
Overall, I know that TAP have improved their service since I used them - however, we will only use them again as a very very last resort.
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Oct 18th, 2007
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