São Paulo: £608 / €698 BUSINESS CLASS from Milan, London, Spain with TAP

Star Alliance member TAP Air Portugal tries to uphold its dominance on flights between Southern Europe and Brazil during the crises. The airlines sells business class tickets between Madrid, Barcelona, London, Milan and São Paulo as low as €698. This fare is available for flights leaving Europe all the way through May 2021. You can add a stopover in Lisbon up to five days without increasing the total.

Update

If you add a stopover in Lisbon, prices with departure from London-Heathrow drop to €533.

Info

Worldwide travel restrictions are in place to slow the spread of Covid-19. We strongly recommend gathering detailed information about the travel and quarantine restrictions that apply to your desired origin and destination.

A good start is the International Air Transport Association (IATA) website. It provides current updates on a country’s immigration policies. Even better, the Covid-19 Travel Regulations Map is one of the most useful tools you can find.

London at £608 (~€707)

Madrid at €698

Barcelona at €698

Milan at €698

TAP operates up to three daily flights between Lisbon and Sao Paulo. Most of them are operated by Airbus A330-900 NEO aircraft. These planes feature TAP’s new Business Class product, featuring lie flat seats in a 1-2-1 seating pattern. You can read a comprehensive review here.

Search & Book

The fare rules give an expiration date of February 11, 2021. A minimum stay of seven days applies. Travel dates at the lowest fare can be found almost daily in March, April and May 2021.

To find suiting flight dates, we recommend using Google Flights. Their calendar will help you find the lowest fares (instructions), which you can put to use in our flight search to find the cheapest fare available via an online travel agency. Booking directly at TAP’s website may increase the price by up to €100, but gives you much better customer service in case anything goes wrong. Since this has become more likely, we advise going this way.

Why is booking with an airline better than with an online travel agency?

More often than not, online travel agencies offer lower fares than airlines do. We still recommend booking with the airlines directly. There are two main reasons for that:

Better Customer Service
In case any problems like delays, cancellations or missed connections arise, you can communicate directly with the airline. The airline has to take care of you because you have a contract with them.

If a travel agency issues your ticket, you may have to reach out to them first. You also depend on your OTA to forward information like flight changes instead of receiving them directly from the airline. In many cases, you may get a prime exhibition of responsibility shifting rather than problem-solving.

This especially applies to premium tickets. You don’t want to spend more than €1,000 to wind up with some budget OTA’s telephone hotline in case anything goes wrong.

Baggage and Other Fees
Economy fares not including hold luggage are industry standard by now. In most cases, travel agencies charge much higher baggage fees than the airlines themselves. If bags are not included in your fare, airlines are often the cheaper alternative.

This also applies to other things like food services, insurances or priority treatment. In almost all cases, you pay less for additional amenities when booking on the airlines’ website.

A good premium fare to Brazil.

Adding a Stopover in Lisbon or Porto

If you book directly on TAP’s website, a pop-up window will automatically open. Its user-friendly interface asks you if and how long you’d like to stay in Portugal. This is by far the easiest way to make the most out of a trip with TAP to any destination of your choice. A stopover in Porto can be added the same way. The best thing – the price of your flight remains the same!

Top notch service – TAP’s stopover pop-up window.

Hint

You can use an even longer stopover to your advantage by booking the flight to Lisbon in May, but the transfer to Brazil in November or December 2021. You would need to fly to Lisbon earlier this year to keep the ticket’s validity. But you can enjoy the long haul trip in late 2021, when travel restrictions might be eased up.

Mileage

TAP issues the tickets in question in booking class J. Even without tier bonuses, most Star Alliance frequent flyer programs will credit up to 200% of your travel distance! You can expect a harvest looking like this: