Review of TAP Air Portugal flight from Madrid to Lisbon in Economy

introduction

Welcome to another trip report! After spending a marvelous time touring Andalusia it was sadly time to start heading back home to the US. We initially started ride out from Granada in the south of Spain visiting friends and family. If you've never been to the south of Spain I highly recommend you do as there's great weather almost all year round and some amazing food! We initially rented a car after landing from our Air Europa flight (which you can find here) and took off driving south for 5 hours. After that long drive we went and explored Malaga, Córdoba, Seville, Motril, Salobreña & Granada. We packed a lot to just be exploring these places in under a week ?. To say the least I was exhausted haha but would totally do it all over again if I could. 

Even though our flight wasn't until past 10p, we still had to return our rental car no later then 6p or else we'd be charged a whole extra day. So we arrived just before then and returned the car without any issue. After that we waited for the free airport shuttle from the car rental office that runs every 30 minutes.  

Since we had a lot of time to kill before boarding, we took it VERY slow to say the least ?. 

Here's a look at the departure board.

Our flight is TP 1029 with an estimated departure time of 22:15

Tonight's flight to Portugal's capital will be a 1hr hop at a distance of 320 mi or 515 km. 

These are all the airlines that depart out of T2. 

check in

We arrived at the check in hall. However we didn't need to checkin as we had mobile boarding passes so we could continue straight to security control.

Security went by very smoothly and we were airside in just 10 minutes. 

Since we had so much time to kill, I decided to just stroll around the terminal and see what cool aircraft I can capture. However being relatively late in the night there wasn't much to see other than this AF A321 bound for Paris Charles de Gaulle airport. 

Here comes my A321NX arriving from Lisbon.

Boarding began promptly as our aircraft came in about 25 minutes late. It seems as the ground crew wanted to just get everyone on the plane so it got very chaotic in the gate area. 

boarding

They announced groups one by one and we soon boarded with group B.

Some information about my plane:
Flight number: TP 1029  
Aircraft: Airbus A321-251NX
Registration: CS-TJO
Delivered: November 14, 2019 

Passing the Economy Xtra section which seemed to make up almost half the aircraft which offer a few extra inches of legroom. Unlike my flight last year with TAP on this same route, this is on a non LR aircraft which meant there was no IFE screens or a proper Business class section like I'd hoped it was going to be on. 

Here's my seat for the next hour, 21A. I had booked a basic ticket which had no free seat selection however, I was lucky to be given a window seat especially one with a great window alignment ?.

No PTV's.

Legroom is a tight 28" pitch. I'm 5'9" or 176cm for reference. Luckily though this is a short 55 minute flight but can only imagine the discomfort if it were a 3+ hour flight.

Since this is a short night flight, I'll show you know the tray table and setback contents. The tray table is a descent size however not extendable.

The safety card. Which even has the registration of the aircraft under where it says 'Neo' which was quite neat. Normally airlines mass produce safety cards for each aircraft type without listing its registration. Does anyone know any other airline that does this? 

The menu. Prices for these items seemed a little on the pricier side if you ask me. 

On this flight however there won't be any service whatsoever due to it's short duration.

Pushback/Takeoff

You can check out the entire takeoff video below:

We'll be departing off runway 36L

Until next time Madrid! Hope to see you soon ;)

Got some amazing night views of Madrid from Above.

The cabin stayed dark throughout this short flight.

We stayed cruising at 31,000ft before we started our initial descent into Lisbon.

Descent/landing

You can checkout the full landing in the video below:

We'll be landing on runway 21.

Unfortunately we'll be arriving at a gate this evening ?. When landing or taking off from Lisbon you sometimes can get lucky and score a bus gate which I'm a huge fan of, anyone else agree? haha

We arrived at our gate only 5 minutes behind schedule.

deplaning

One last look at our A321NX. Thanks for the safe but short journey!

This concludes the trip report. Thanks for reading!