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Portugália

IATA NI ICAO PGA Callsign PORTUGALIA
Founded	1988
Hubs	Portela Airport
Focus cities	Francisco Sá Carneiro Airport
Frequent flyer program	Victoria
Fleet size	16 (with PGA Express)
Destinations	23
Parent company	TAP Portugal
Headquarters	Lisbon, Portugal
Key people	João Ribeiro da Fonseca (President)

Portugália (Companhia Portuguesa de Transportes Aereos SA) is a regional airline based in Lisbon, Portugal, a subsidiary of TAP Portugal. It operates scheduled international and domestic services from Lisbon and Porto, as well as European charter services. Its main base is Portela Airport, Lisbon with a hub at Francisco Sá Carneiro Airport, Porto.^[1]

TAP Portugal announced that all Portugália flights will be operated by Portugália aircraft but with TAP's flight code, so all flights will be TAP Portugal flights operated by Portugália.^[2]

History

The airline was established on 25 July 1988 as a joint-stock company, but had to wait two years before it could start services, due to a delay in air transport liberalization. It started operations on 7 July 1990 with a flight from Lisbon to Porto. It also flew from Lisbon to Faro that same day. It started operations with scheduled domestic and international charter flights, as scheduled international flights were not then permitted under Portuguese legislation. International scheduled flights started in June 1992 from Lisbon and Porto. On 6 November 2006, TAP and Portugalia's owners Grupo Espirito Santo, announced TAP's acquisition of 99.81% of Portugalia shares, subject to approval by the regulatory authorities. It has 750 employees (at March 2007). Portugalia was to join the SkyTeam Alliance in 2008^[1], but since it was bought by Star Alliance member TAP Portugal, its not known if it will join Star Alliance as a regional member.

A subsidiary of Portugalia, PGA Express, operates services from Lisbon to A Coruña, Bilbao, Málaga and Pamplona.

For several years, Portugália was granted with the "Best Regional Airline in Europe" stamp and in 2005 was granted in second place in the category "Best Airline of Europe" by Skytrack.

Destinations

For list of destinations see: Portugália destinations

Fleet

The Portugalia fleet includes the following aircraft (as of June 2008)^[1] :

CS-TPH a Embraer 145

Incidents

On 11 August 2001 the left main landing gear of a Portugalia Fokker 100 aircraft collapsed during taxi at Lisbon Airport. No-one was injured.

External links

• Portugália website, now redirects to TAP Portugal website

References

Airlines of Portugal Aero VIP (Portugal) · Agroar Carga Aérea · EuroAtlantic Airways · Hifly · Luzair · Masterjet · Omni - Aviação e Tecnologia · Orbest · PGA Express · Portugália · SATA Air Açores · SATA International · TAP Portugal · White Airways

Definition from Wiktionary, a free dictionary

Hungarian

Hungarian Wikipedia has an article on:

Portugália

Wikipedia ^hu

Etymology

portugál + -ia

Proper noun

Portugália

1. Portugal (a country in Europe)

Declension