TAP Air Portugal is adding a burst of extra capacity between Lisbon and Berlin in the first half of October 2026. Schedule filings reported by AeroRoutes show seven additional round-trip flights spread across four dates, and the aircraft assignments are the interesting part: most of the extra sectors are set to be flown by widebodies.
The extra flights
The additional services are concentrated on 3, 4, 8 and 9 October 2026. Northbound, TP3334 and TP3332 carry the extra departures from Lisbon: on 3 October TP3334 leaves at 07:35 for an 11:55 arrival in Berlin with an A321, and TP3332 departs at 13:30 arriving 17:55 with an A330-900neo. On 4 October TP3334 leaves at 08:45 arriving 13:05 and TP3332 again at 13:30 arriving 17:55, both with the A330-900neo. On 8 October TP3334 operates at 10:15 β 14:45 with an A320neo, and on 9 October TP3332 departs 07:35 arriving 12:05 with an A320 while TP3334 leaves at 13:00 arriving 17:30 with an A330-900neo.
The southbound legs mirror the pattern. TP3335 and TP3333 return from Berlin between 13:10 and 19:10 across the same four dates, with the same mix of A320, A320neo, A321 and A330-900neo equipment.
Widebodies on a short-haul run
Putting an A330-900neo on a roughly two-and-a-half-hour intra-European sector is unusual but not arbitrary. Long-haul aircraft frequently pick up short-haul flying when their normal rotations leave them idle at the home base, and slotting a widebody into a high-demand European sector is an efficient way to move a large number of seats without adding an extra narrowbody rotation. The A330-900neo seats well over 290 passengers in TAP's configuration, roughly double a typical A320.
The concentration of these flights on a Saturday, Sunday, Thursday and Friday points to a demand peak rather than a permanent schedule change. Early October is a shoulder-season period in which leisure traffic to and from Iberia remains strong while business travel is at full pace, and one-off capacity injections of this kind are typically tied to a specific event or a booking surge that the base schedule cannot absorb.
Berlin in the TAP network
Berlin Brandenburg is one of TAP's German points alongside Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg and Duesseldorf. Germany is a significant feeder market for the airline's Lisbon hub, where passengers connect onward to Brazil, West Africa and North America β the strengths that have defined TAP's long-haul network for decades. Extra Lisbon β Berlin capacity therefore does more than serve point-to-point demand; it also widens the connecting window into the airline's transatlantic bank.
The additional flights come as TAP continues to operate under close scrutiny of its privatisation process, with the Portuguese government working through the sale of a stake in the carrier. Capacity decisions like this one are ordinary commercial housekeeping, but they offer a useful read on where the airline sees demand holding up.
As with all filed schedules at this range, the extra services remain subject to change. Aircraft assignments in particular can move if a widebody is needed elsewhere in the network closer to the date.
Sources: AeroRoutes. Featured image: AI-generated by AviationShop. By Marco Bianchi.
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