TAP has issued its IATA winter timetable, the period of lower demand, when airlines traditionally cut back on the number of flights, but, apart from maintaining all its operations, the Portuguese carrier has announced that it is expanding the number of weekly flights at Porto, Lisbon and the Azores, while maintaining direct a flight to Porto Santo, Madeira.

In Porto, TAP is increasing the Madrid flights from a daily connection to 12 flights a week. The carrier is doubling its flights to Zurich from one to two flights a day. These routes are to be operated using the comfortable, new Embraer E190 aircraft and have very convenient departure and arrival times with connections in the morning and evening.

TAP is also going to continue to be the only airline to offer long-haul flights from Porto twice a week to São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Newark.

All the other European destinations operated out of Porto's Francisco Sá Carneiro airport are going to have the same number of connections as in the current IATA summer timetable, with a total of 72 flights a week to Geneva (14 flights a week), London (14), Paris Orly (21), Amsterdam (7), Luxembourg (4), Funchal (12) and 126 weekly shuttle flights between Porto and Lisbon.

It should be noted in the connection between Porto and London, that the timetable was altered to reintroduce the London departure at the end of the day, to meet the needs of business travellers.

Considering all the routes operated out of Porto, TAP is offering a total of 230 flights a week to cities in Portugal, Europe, the United States and Brazil.

The biggest news in Lisbon for the coming winter, in terms of an increase in flights, is the duplication of the flights to Ponta Delgada that are being boosted from once to twice daily, with the second flight leaving Lisbon at 21:55, ensuring an early morning departure from Ponta Delgada at 7:00 so TAP can provide more convenient times and increase the connections to its European network. The connections to Casablanca are also increased from once to twice a day. Another five new business day flights to Frankfurt are to be added to the current three flights a day, leaving Lisbon at 6:45 to respond to business traveller demands.

There is also the continuation of the direct weekly flight between Lisbon and Porto Santo, Madeira, an operation that was suspended last winter.

Comparing the flights from Lisbon's Humberto Delgado airport after 30 October, when the IATA winter timetable comes into force, with the same period last year, there are important increases in the supply, particularly the greater number of flights to Cape Verde, with 11 flights a week to Praia, instead of 6; 8 instead of 6 to Sal and 4 instead of 3 to S. Vicente. Still looking at Africa and compared with last winter, there are going to be 10 flights to Dakar rather than just the 7 seen last year. Plus, TAP is going to operate night flights between Lisbon and Luanda for the first time in both directions.

In Europe, compared with the last IATA winter timetable, TAP is to operate 3 flights rather than 2 to Munich, there is to be an extra daily flight to Paris Orly, meaning 7 rather than 6, and Barcelona, which sees the number of flights go up from 5 to 6 a day.

In the USA, there are going to be daily flights to Miami, whereas last year there were just 3 a week.