Well ladies and gentlemen, cats and dogs, birds or bugs, the big trip of summer 2026 is FINALLY here. On this trip, we will review 9 flights, 5 airlines, visit 5 new airports and experience both full service carriers and low cost carriers or short and long haul routes. You’ve read that title right, after countless real word trip reports to Colombia 
we are instead going to Europe! I’m really excited for this trip and it’s quite a long time in the making, my family and I had planned to go for years since 2020 and just haven’t been able to. Problems like money, passports and work have all been serious hurdles in making this trip come through but now we can finally say, it’s been done. I’m flying from Miami, FL 
to Madrid, ESP 
but if you’ve read the title, we aren’t flying to MAD. Instead we’ll be flying with TAP Air Portugal on their Airbus A330-900neo in economy class for the first hop to Lisbon, PRT 
and than their Embraer E190 for the rest of the way. We will only be covering the long haul MIA - LIS flight today and leave the short hop for tomorrow. So without further ado, let’s get going!
After a slightly altered trip down here because of some closures of I-95 around Miami Gardens. We have arrived at Miami International Airport’s south terminal concourse J which is the home of most foreign airlines that operate at MIA which aren’t American Airlines or any of their partner airlines. It is currently 12:30am as I’m writing this which is pretty late. In fact, the TAP staff apart from some Avianca employees were the only people at the airport, every other counter was closed. The only 4 flights remaining of the night were a LATAM flight to Quito, ECU 
and 2 Avianca flights one to Guayaquil, ECU and the other to Bogota, COL and of course our flight to LIS. Despite checking in online, not having any checked luggage and having our boarding passes already, we still had to make the line to verify our passports as we were told that we might not be able to go through TSA. The wait wasn’t terribly long apart from that fact that we did end up checking in 2 bags as one was deemed “too big” for carry on and the other was light enough that the lady at the counter let us check them in free of charge. Given the late hour, only one checkpoint was open and as you could expect, everybody was here. All in all it took approximately 20 minutes which honestly isn’t all that bad considering this is the checkpoint everybody was using. MIAs concourse J is the newest part of the airport, newest as in 19 years old as it opened in 2007. Despite its age now, it is still truly an amazing part of the airport, it is very vast and open, drastically different from other concourses here. However it being extremely open makes it very liminal in my opinion especially at this time of day. With the aforementioned flights departing one by one, eventually it was just heading to Lisbon left here. That is however, how I spent the time waiting to board my flight as it’s just a unique experience I don’t think I’ll ever get to experience again. On a side note, for some reason at gate J9 was an American Airlines Boeing 737-800 even though they operate at concourses D and E. Apart from a convenience store as you’d say, nothing else was open and people were sleeping in all of the empty chairs scattered across the terminal. Some even took advantage of those massage chairs you see in malls and marked their territory there. I payed a visit to gate J16 where our aircraft was but unfortunately, it’s one *those* gates which lack views out on the ramp.
FLIGHT INFO:
Origin: Miami Intl 
(MIA/KMIA)
Destination: Humberto Delgado (LIS/LPPT)
Flight Time: 7:35
Airbus A330-900neo (TAP Air Portugal)
Server: None (Real Life)
Like I said, our gate J16 doesn’t not provide a good view of our aircraft so instead I’ll show you guys the AA B738 parked here to prove that I wasn’t lying when I said that. CS-TUI will be our ride to Portugal tonight or this morning, a 6 year old Airbus A330-900neo delivered to TAP Air Portugal in September 2019 and has the name Fernão Mendes Pinto, A Portuguese explorer and writer.
Eventually, boarding time came around and the place was PACKED. Mind you boarding started at 3:10am and it was 3:05am when I got to the boarding area. It did look like however we were indeed boarding and not just standing around so we all just pushed to that door.
TAPs Airbus A330-900neos consist of 298 total seats in a 2 class configuration. Upfront are 34 business class seats featuring Recaro CL6710 seats in a 1-2-1 configuration. Back in economy there are 264 Recaro CL3710 seats in the typical A330 2-4-2 configuration.
Now I took a big risk by not selecting my seats in advance but I managed to get lucky and be assigned a window seat, 30K. Now for MIA departures, typically a left side seat is better but I’m fine here as it’s a different perspective and I was NOT going to pay $67 to sit on the left side of the plane. Waiting for me on the seat was blanket and pillow which was much appreciated. The seat itself is comfortable enough for this flight which says a lot as this is actually my first ever long haul flight. Hopefully I can fall asleep quickly but given our departure time, it might be easier than I think. The seats are all equipped with personal entertainment screens which I’ll be checking out once we get closer to Lisbon. For now, it’s time to pushback and make our way to MIAs RWY 8R for take off!
Now it’s been a while since I’ve experienced this departure but I’m glad I got to again. Now yeah the left side would’ve been better but the right side was great as well. I even caught a glimpse of Inter Miami’s brand new stadium near MIA. Previously they actually played in Fort Lauderdale
and not in the 305 itself. I even saw Little Havana and even parts of Brickell all lit up this early morning or late night. Anyways, goodbye to Miami Lisbon here we come!
After a climbing out over the dark Atlantic Ocean
apart from maybe the Bahamas 
we reached our cruising altitude of 39,000ft. I was really tired at this point so I attempted to try and get some sleep, before this we were all handed out chocolates 
and earphones.
I maybe got 40 minutes of sleep or so before being woken up by the words “beef or pasta” meaning that the meal service was already beginning. Kind of strange given at this point it was 5:00am or so and most of us just wanted to sleep. Anyways, I chose the pasta 
which ended up being mixed in with marinara and pesto sauce along with turkey ham. A Ceveda salad 
along with Vinagrete, chocolate mousse and a bread roll and butter where provided with the meal. All of this includes a choice of beverage which I chose a Coke. All in all, I actually really liked it, airplane food typically gets a bad reputation but I have to say this was actually solid. The pasta was really good surprisingly and warm, the chocolate mousse and bread roll were also fantastic. Now the salad honestly wasn’t that great but it was still good and very much appreciated.
For Entertainment, TAP installed the Panasonic eX3 system which is very responsive for the most part and provides a solid amount content to watch on demand and even one of the best in flight maps I’ve seen. Now I said for the most part for a reason, because at one point midway through the flight, the system crashed on me and stopped working properly even after arriving at the gate in Lisbon which is pretty unfortunate. But I did want to prioritise sleep on this flight so it’s whatever. Free WiFi is available with internet access for the full flight costing €30 which I didn’t bother with purchasing as like I said, I wanted to sleep this flight. The WiFi system this aircraft is equipped with is the Panasonic Avionics Ku-band satellite wifi. Given my priorities and of course the system crashing on me, I didn’t bother with the IFE on this flight. As a note, you can use the free WiFi to access the TAP website which provides some useful information and even a good moving map so not having a working screen wasn’t the end of the world for me.
Around this time, the sun was actually beginning to rise and it looks phenomenal
I didn’t keep the window shade open for too long as most of the cabin is trying to sleep and we were advised to close them.
After maybe an hour and a half or so of sleep, I was woken up by some fierce turbulence. Having my head on the side panels made the sound even more extreme, it sounded like the engines were fully powered up and than all of a sudden flaming out. By this point, we were approximately halfway between MIA and LIS. Soon enough, the turbulence did seem to stop as the crew turned off the seatbelt sign so I attempted to hit the hay for probably the 50th time now.
Unfortunately, we would be encountering more turbulence, not crazy crazy like before but still enough to wake me up. At this point, my PTV had also broke for some reason and with the crew still wanting the cabin to be dark, you can imagine there wasn’t a lot I can do at this point. Luckily, we only had about 2 and a half hours remaining at this point. Using the tracker on TAP’s website, I saw that we were just north of the Azores Islands.
About an hour later, we were served a pre landing snack which consisted of a cheese sandwich
and a muffin along with a choice of beverage. This time I chose an apple juice 
seeming as this can be considered breakfast even though our arrival time is 4pm in the afternoon in Lisbon, which is 11am in Miami so it makes sense. The meal itself was okay, not great but not terrible either but it was honestly what I was expecting for a pre landing meal for a 8 hour flight. So all in all, there is truly nothing to complain about as they could’ve given us nothing at all and that would’ve been way worse.
Shortly after, we were finally able to open the window shades meaning that we were beginning the approach into Lisbon. We would continue our eastwards trek towards Portugal
before making a small deviation south before a 180 to land on LISs RWY 03.
Out the window was our first up close sight of land, Cabo, Espichel, PRT
Lisbon is often compared to San Francisco, CA and this approach very much proved that correct. Down below I spotted a bridge which looked very identical to the Golden Gate Bridge in SF and the general layout of the cities are pretty similar. Not to mention the hills and tram that can be found in both. And this is coming from someone who’s never been to both also won’t be staying in Lisbon as I have connecting flight right after this. Anyways, let’s enjoy this finally and beautiful approach into LISs RWY 03
My first flight on a butter bus did indeed result in a butter landing! Anyway, welcome to Lisbon, PRT
after a very long flight from Miami Against all odds, I actually managed to make it. For my first transatlantic and long haul flight, TAP Air Portugal did a really good job I must say. The seats were good, the crew were friendly and the meals were good for the most part. My only complaint has to be the inflight entertainment, not because it lacked options but because it simply died on me midway through the flight. It’s not like I used it that much but that’s still something worth mentioning. But apart from that, TAP is a great airline and given how Lisbon is pretty close to the Atlantic coast, it’s a perfect airline to enter Europe with!
Welcome to Lisbon’s Humberto Delgado International Airport! As our A330-900neo heads off to Newark, NJ. We will be making our way to our connecting flight to Madrid, but first thing is first passport control
which is much different compared to the United States and in a good way, here at LIS, all we had to do was scan our passports, scan our faces and scan our fingerprints and we were quickly admitted into the EU. We will be leaving it off here and continue tomorrow with our connecting flight.
That will be it for the first part of this trip from Miami, FL to Lisbon, PRT on TAP Air Portugal’s Airbus A330-900neo in economy class and I hoped you enjoyed it. Stay tuned for tomorrow as I cover the flight to Madrid, ESP and an YouTube video regarding this trip report once I come back. And as always between now and the next time, see you in the sky! 
