LISBON: Twenty-one flights have been cancelled during the first eight hours of a ten day strike being held by pilots for Portugal’s national airline TAP, which started Friday, 1 May.
A TAP spokesperson at Lisbon airport told the media that at least 21 flights had been cancelled from that airport by 8am Friday morning, with many of them being cancelled from Oporto. The daily 6am flight from Faro to Lisbon did depart. TAP flights make up just three percent of Faro’s operations with three daily flights all to and from Lisbon.
Constitutionally-required minimum services mean the airline must ensure some flights to Portugal’s islands, former colonies such as Angola and Mozambique as well as to Brazil and key destinations within Europe with large immigrant populations such as Switzerland and the UK, are upheld.