TAP Express
Portugália is an airline based in Lisbon, Portugal. It is a regional airline operating scheduled international and domestic flights from Lisbon and Porto, together with charters to Spain, France, Italy, Germany, UK and Belgium. Its main base is Portela International Airport (LIS), Lisbon, with a hub at Porto Airport (OPO).
Code Data
History
The airline was established on 25 July 1988 as a joint-stock company, but had to wait two years before it could start services, due to a delay in air transport liberalisation. It started operations on July 7 1990 with a flight from from Lisbon to Porto. It also flew from Lisbon to Faro that same day. It started operations with scheduled domestic and international charter flights, as scheduled international flights were not then permitted under Portuguese legislation. International scheduled flights started in June 1992 from Lisbon and Porto. Grupo Espirito Santo owns 84.34% of the company, which employs 745 staff.
A subsidiary of Portugalia, PGA Express, operates services from Lisbon to La Coruna and Malaga.
Services
Portugalia operates the following services (at January 2005):
- Domestic scheduled destinations: Lisbon and Porto.
- International scheduled destinations: Barcelona, Basle/Mulhouse, Bilbao, Bologna, Brussels, Corunna (A Coruña), Lyon, Madrid, Málaga, Manchester, Marseille, Milan, Nice, Stuttgart, Toulouse, Turin, Valencia, Valladolid and Zurich.
Fleet
Portugália's fleet consists of the following aircraft (at January 2005):
- 8 Embraer ERJ-145
- 6 Fokker 100
- 2 Saab 2000 (operated by PGA Express)
- 1 Raytheon Beech 1900D (operated by PGA Express)