TAP FLIGHT TO MONTREAL (YUL)

TAP AirPortugal will start operating a daily Lisbon-Montreal flight, except for Wednesday. So far, no details on the schedule have been made public. The airline will operate its new Airbus A321LR aircraft. Service will start 23 May, 2020 with the following schedule:

TP253 LIS 1455 – 1740 YUL 32Q x3
TP254 YUL 1910 – 0650+1 LIS 32Q x3
(Source: Routes Online)

TAP AirPortugal operates Toronto-Lisbon 4x/weekly on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday:

TP259 LIS-YYZ 17:40 – 21:10
TP262 YYZ-LIS 22:50 – 10:50 (+1)

WHY IS THIS GREAT NEWS FOR CANADIAN TRAVEL HACKERS?

One of the frequent flyer program traps is to book a reward ticket with an airline that charges high fees. With respect to Aeroplan, carriers that charge high fees, particularly on transatlantic flights, are known. Whatever you do, avoid booking Air Canada, Lufthansa or Austrian. They are just the worse. You can see the high fees in the following 2 examples:

Seeing those two reward flights doesn’t bring confidence into the loyalty program. However, there are Star Alliance member airlines that do not charge high fees on reward flights.

That means that if you book a reward flight using your Aeroplan miles on those carriers you can expect a small fee. Out of Canada, these carriers are Swiss Airlines (LX), Turkish Airlines (TK) & Brussels Airlines! See how we saved more than $3,550 on our family trip to Doha & Muscat with TK & LX airlines.

Here’s an example of a Brussels Airlines YUL-BRU reward flight:

Notice how low the charge & fee is: $60.70. That’s a far cry from the +$325 fee Air Canada and Lufthansa charge. That is more than 5 times than Brussels Airlines. Seems like Brussels Airlines is part of the same club as Singapore Airlines, Swiss Airlines, Turkish Airlines, TAP to name a few. It’s also a great addition to linking YUL to Europe.

CONCLUSION

Again this is great news for Canadian travel hackers who fly out of Montreal (YUL) TAP is the 4th carrier so far that offers reward flights with low fees. More options for Canadian travel hackers that fly out of YUL.