Typically, I think of TAP as offering cheap cash flights in business class between North America and Europe, but are TAP miles any good?
For this post, I’m not going to get into the details of the elite status aspect of the program and instead focus on the redemption side of the program.
Two banks transfer to TAP Miles&Go
If you need TAP miles in a hurry, only two bank programs transfer points over to TAP Miles&Go:
- Bilt Rewards (1:1)
- Capital One (1:1)
Generally, you can expect the miles to appear instantly once you transfer.
Award flights booked with TAP miles can be booked 360 days in advance
As a planner, I love being able to book awards well far in advance. I feel like I can lock down my preferred dates of travel before the majority of other award seekers. And so the earlier the schedule is released, the better it is.
But perhaps what matters more is being able to book awards before those with a large balance of miles with U.S. programs are able to book. Those programs generally open schedules and award bookings 11 months in advance. So if you can find a program that allows awards weeks before the comparable U.S. airline (here, United), you can generally book what you want.
Award flights booked with TAP miles can be booked 360 days in advance. That’s awesome if you can take advantage!
Award change and cancel fees aren’t too bad if flying TAP
Looking to change or cancel your award flight? TAP Miles&Go fees aren’t too bad if you’re on TAP:
- Award change fees
- Within Europe: €50
- Continental flight: €75
- Partner award: €150
- Award cancel fees
- Flights on TAP: €75
- Flights on partners: €100
The €150 change fee for partner awards is painful. You’re better off canceling for €100 in this case. The one exception is if you hold Gold or Navigator status, in which case it will be free.
Awards booked with TAP miles are zone-based
TAP Air Portugal’s loyalty program prices out awards based on zones and maintains award charts. There are separate award charts for awards on TAP and those on its partners including Star Alliance flights. Furthermore, there are separate prices for economy and business class travel (as well as first class on partners flights).
TAP may make additional seats available on their own flights at a higher price. That’s typically the trend you’ll see from other loyalty programs. If their flights are available at the lowest price as shown on the award chart, it should be available as saver awards from other loyalty programs.
Let’s jump into the award charts.
Awards on TAP Air Portugal
If you’re looking to travel on TAP, you’ll find the following award chart for economy class. Expect the lowest price available to follow the following chart if saver flights are available. If not, based on my searching, prices will jump about 45% from the amounts listed below. Hopefully you can find saver awards for your preferred route and date.
And business class is dictated by the following chart. Similar to economy class, from my searching, it looks like when saver awards are not available, prices will jump 45%.
The region definitions TAP uses are below. The limited number of countries within each region is simply because the airline only flies to a limited number of countries.
Lastly, TAP offers a 25% discount for child tickets for children with ages between 2 and 11. However, this discount only applies to TAP Air Portugal flights.
Partner / Star Alliance award chart
If you’re looking to fly on one of TAP Air Portugal’s partner airlines, you’ll find the following award charts. The good news is that even though TAP doesn’t operate first class flights, they do offer first class awards for other carriers. Of course, it’s not a good rate, but at least the option exists.
TAP’s partners include all Star Alliance carriers plus Azul, Emirates, GOL, and Sata Azores Airlines. Specifically for flights not on TAP Air Portugal, one stopover is allowed for roundtrip award travel.
What are the sweet spots?
Flying in Emirates business class between North America and Oceania
One good thing about TAP’s partners is that you can fly long distances on Emirates and not have to pay extra miles for the pleasure. It might seem strange, but flying Europe to Oceania on Emirates costs 150,000 miles while the much longer North America to Oceania route only costs 130,000 miles. The nonstop North America to Australia/New Zealand routes are all unicorns to find award space, so having this option might make comfortable travel possible.
Asia to Middle East business class for 60,000 miles
One efficient possibility for your TAP miles is flying between Asia and the Middle east in business class for only 60,000 miles. If you really wanted to space this out, fly Emirates between Dubai and Hong Kong. Then, book it as a roundtrip for 120,000 miles and include a stopover in Bangkok. Emirates operates a fifth freedom flight between Bangkok and Hong Kong. In my opinion, the stopover helps justify the pricing as one that’s pretty reasonable.
Alternatively, fly on Turkish between the Middle East and Asia. Türkiye isn’t considered in the Middle East on TAP’s definitions, so you’ll want to just connect in Istanbul on the way.
Intra-North America business class for 45,000 miles
North America includes Hawaii, Canada, and the Caribbean. So one thing you can consider is linking together a journey on United or Air Canada that touches multiple countries. It might be a little tough to find award space given how many people end up traveling to Hawaii, but if you can find it, you’ll pay a good price. And don’t forget the potential stopover!
Infant awards are supposed to be 10% of the cash fare
Back when we flew internationally with an infant, we ended up sometimes paying a pretty penny to allow our child to sit in our lap. Without getting into the debate on the safety of the lap child, I can say it sometimes got expensive.
With most airlines, you would be forced to pay 10% of the cash price of the ticket. Say you found a flight for 75,000 miles in business class one-way. But if you want to bring your lap infant, you’d have to pay 10% of the cash fare, which could be thousands of dollars. A one-way flight is painfully priced high, and you might pay less if doing a roundtrip, but it’s still quite a dent. I’d say the rough average of what we paid for an infant was around $600 for the ticket.
With TAP Air Portugal, that’s supposed to be the case as well where you only pay 10% of the cash price. However, when you call to book your lap infant, there are reports of lap infant charges that far exceed the cash price. These agents might be quoting 10% of the full fare rather than the fare you’re seeing as the cheapest available. To resolve, you might need to read off the fare basis code found on ITA Matrix so they pull in the correct price.
How to best search for availability?
I always start with the website to figure out availability patterns. The TAP website is a bit basic. If you search for a flight and the desired date returns a flight, you’ll see the flight but then have to go day by day blindly looking for the better price. A price calendar only automatically appears if the date you chose has no availability.
You can force the calendar to appear if you scroll to the top of the results and click the “Dates” button. Results take a while to load, but scrolling up and down on the page seems to force it to appear quicker.
As for the results themselves, you can tell the Advanced Search in the beginning to provide business class (Executive) results only. However, if you move to the calendar feature at all, you’ll lose that search constraint. Thus, the site is better suited if you only care about economy class redemptions.
Since you can transfer Bilt points to TAP miles, the free point.me award tool can help you out. Beyond that, you can certainly use whichever third-party tool you’re most comfortable with using to track down partner availability.
Do TAP miles expire?
Yes, TAP miles expire after three years. Some promotional miles might expire after only one year. There is no way to extend these miles based on account activity, unfortunately. You can pay money to have them extended another three years. So TAP Miles&Go is most definitely not a program to house your spare miles and points.
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