TAP Air Portugal has launched two new routes out of Porto's Francisco Sá Carneiro Airport, connecting the city directly to Terceira in the Azores and to Praia in Cabo Verde for the first time. The Terceira route began July 1st, and the Praia route followed a day later.

The Porto–Terceira link runs four times a week, Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays, on Airbus A320neo aircraft. Porto–Praia runs three times weekly, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays, also on A320neos.

Why these two destinations

TAP frames the Terceira route as a way to bring Porto closer to a UNESCO World Heritage island the airline says has "enormous tourism potential." The Praia route is pitched differently: as a way to strengthen ties between communities, and as a boost to tourism and business links between northern Portugal and Cabo Verde.

With these additions, TAP now offers more than 130 direct weekly flights out of Porto, including 21 weekly frequencies across six intercontinental destinations, rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, New York, Boston, Luanda, and now Praia. The airline also confirmed that Porto–Boston, previously a seasonal route, is now switching to year-round service.

Porto is TAP's stated "next big bet", a phrase the airline used in May, months before these routes launched.

Part of a bigger northern push

These routes aren't a standalone move. Back in May, at the TAP Awards 2026, the airline had already named Porto its "próxima grande aposta", its next big bet, and announced plans to expand international operations out of the city starting this summer.

That strategy includes a new €20 million Maintenance and Engineering hub at Porto Airport, expected to be completed by 2028. According to TAP, the new facility will be able to handle two Airbus A321 aircraft (or equivalent models) at once, allowing the airline to bring major fleet inspections in-house, cut operating costs, and create roughly 200 highly specialized jobs in the region.

Why this matters if you live here

For residents in and around Porto, this is a steady expansion of how easy, and how direct, it is to get in and out of the city, whether you're visiting family in the Azores or Cabo Verde, or flying transatlantic without routing through Lisbon. It's also a signal that Porto's airport infrastructure and job market in aviation maintenance are likely to keep growing over the next two years as the 2028 hub comes online.