At a joining ceremony held in Lisbon on March 14th, 2005, representatives of the Star Alliance network welcomed TAP Portugal as their 16th member. With Portugal’s leading airline having joined, the airline network for Earth™ now offers its customers an even greater choice of flights, especially in Europe, the South Atlantic, as well as to and from North America and Africa.

By adding Lisbon to its European hubs, Star Alliance now offers ten strategically placed connecting airports across the continent. TAP also brings some very unique destinations and routes into the network, such as Madeira and the Azores on its domestic Portuguese network, the Cape Verde Islands, Guinea Bissau, Luanda, Maputo and Sao Tome and Principe in Africa as well as non-stop flights between Lisbon and the cities of Fortaleza, Natal, Recife and Salvador thus cutting travelling time from Europe to north-eastern Brazil by several hours.