Several major European airlines are resuming flights to the U.S. as it officially reopens to international travelers Monday, November 8. Here’s what’s happening.
TAP Air Portugal
TAP Air Portugal is once again operating from all seven of its U.S. gateways with the return of service from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport last night. With daily service from JFK through January and for the summer season, New Yorkers will have three daily flights to Lisbon on TAP, from JFK and Newark Liberty International.
TAP will operate daily nonstops from JFK from November 7 through January 31, 2022, reducing to four flights weekly (on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays) from February 2 through March 25. JFK service will operate daily again for summer, starting March 27. The new flight, TP 210, will depart JFK at 10 p.m., arriving in Lisbon at 9:30 a.m. the following morning. The returning flight, TP 209, will leave Lisbon at 5 p.m., arriving at JFK at 8 p.m.
The new route will be operated with TAP’s Airbus A330-900neo aircraft, featuring the new Airspace by Airbus cabin. The cabin’s configuration and design create an updated, modern mood, with seats with deeper recline in Economy and with more legroom in EconomyXtra. The seat pitch in regular economy is 31 inches, while EconomyXtra offers an additional three inches of legroom, for a pitch of 34 inches. The A330-900neo has 168 seats in Economy and 96 seats in EconomyXtra.
In TAP’s Executive business class, TAP offers 34 new fully flat reclining chairs. These seats also include outlets for both USBs and individual electrical plugs, connections for headphones, individual reading lights, and more space—including more storage room.
TAP’s 10 North American gateways currently comprise Boston, Cancun, Chicago, Miami, Montreal, Newark, New York (JFK), San Francisco, Toronto, and Washington, D.C. (Dulles). On December 11, TAP will also introduce its first Caribbean operations, with nonstop service between Lisbon and Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic, TAP’s 11th North American gateway.
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines
As of Monday, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines will reopen its United States network to European travelers, on condition that they are vaccinated and hold a negative PCR test. As of today, passengers have access to 64 weekly KLM flights to 11 destinations.
This means KLM has resumed service to all destinations it was serving directly in the winter before the coronavirus pandemic broke out. This includes Los Angeles (daily), San Francisco (five times weekly; daily from December 6), Chicago (five times weekly), Boston (thrice weekly), Atlanta (daily), Miami (thrice weekly from December 7), Las Vegas (thrice weekly from December 7), New York (daily), Washington (five times weekly), Minneapolis (thrice weekly) and Houston (daily). Additionally, KLM offers passengers a broader network of U.S. destinations through its partner Delta Air Lines.
Iberia
As in all markets where COVID-19 restrictions are being lifted, Iberia is resuming its flights and even adding destinations, such as Dallas, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., scheduled for the summer season that begins in April and will be available for booking in the near future.
Starting in April, Iberia will operate four weekly return flights from Madrid to Dallas, the hub of American Airlines, with which Iberia has a Joint Business Agreement. (British Airways and Finnair are also partners in the JBA, which covers routes between Europe and the North Atlantic.)
Iberia’s plans to fly from Madrid to the U.S. capital were interrupted by the outbreak of the pandemic, but now they are back on track for four weekly return flights starting in April. Summer flights to San Francisco will be resumed in 2022, with three return flights per week from Madrid starting in April.
These destinations will bring the number of cities served directly by Iberia in the United States, to nine. In the current winter season that began on October 31, Iberia has scheduled 70 flights per week between Spain and the U.S., reaching the same cities it served before the pandemic began. Specifically, the airline is operating 10 weekly return flights to both New York and Miami, five flights a week to Chicago, and three weekly flights to Boston and Los Angeles. It is also flying four times a week to San Juan in Puerto Rico, a destination included in the North Atlantic JBA with American Airlines, British Airways and Finnair.
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