For those of us that thought Portugal’s privatised airline, TAP, was no fun anymore, the company run by Humberto Pedrosa and David Neeleman has gone retro and painted one of its Airbus A330-300s in a 1960s livery.
"We wanted to celebrate the journey that has been made so far with a very special paint job," said a TAP spokesman.
The old style airplane will start service on Monday June 26th but for those that may never see it up close, TAP has released a video of the repainting, speeded up of course.
Titled "A gift with a past", in the video TAP says "We wanted to celebrate the journey that has been made so far with a very special painting," because "72 years is a source of pride for anyone."
Transportes Aéreos Portugueses, SGPS, S.A was founded on March 14th, 1945 at the tail end of WWII.
The video is 72 seconds long and shows the aircraft, leased to Singapore Airlines, from when it arrives at the hangar to the completion of the "retro" paint job.
This is the same livery as used in the 1960s and 1970s, and includes the words "Transportes Aéreos Portugueses" along the fuselage, as well as the old ‘flight’ symbol.
TAP management plans a different style of paint job for a second A330-300 aircraft where a tourist destination will be painted on the fuselage.
Sud Aviation Caravelle VI-R of TAP at London Heathrow Airport in 1966
To see a video of the paint job, if you can stand waiting for the inevitable ad to finish, go to:
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TAP in the 1960s and 1970s:
Beginning in 1960, TAP Portugal launched Rio de Janeiro as its first destination in Brazil, in a jointly-operated air service named "Voo da Amizade" ("Friendship Flight") with Panair do Brasil (1960-1965) and Varig (1965-1967). A route from Lisbon to Goa, a 19-hour flight with five stopovers, was added to the network in the beginning of the 1960s.
TAP entered the jet era in July 1962, when three Sud Aviation Caravelle twin-jet airliners were acquired and operated on the airline's most competitive European routes.
The one-millionth passenger flew on TAP on 19 June 1964, 18 years after the airline began operations. In 1966 TAP operated its first sole flight to Brazil, when a company Boeing 707 landed at Galeão Airport in Rio de Janeiro, on 17 June at 17.32 GMT. Precisely at the same time and on the same day as the hydroplane Santa Cruz moored in Guanabara Bay in 1922, when Sacadura Cabral and Gago Coutinho made their historic South Atlantic crossing. The route to Brazil was inaugurated.
In 1967, the airline achieved a milestone: it became the first European airline to fly exclusively with jets.
In 1969, service to New York City via Santa Maria Island began. Boston was added to the New York service in 1970.
TAP began 1974 with 32 state-of-the-art aircraft operating to more than 40 destinations on four continents, it began offering computerised reservations, load control and check-in (known as Tapmatic), and became the first European airline to carry out major comprehensive overhauls of the Boeing 747 engines.
By the end of 1974, TAP had carried more than 1.5 million passengers, flown 68,210 hours over a network of almost 103,000 kilometres and had a staff of over 9,000. Following the 25 April 1974 revolution, Portugal was caught up in the wave of nationalisations during the following year and TAP was no exception, thus becoming a state-owned corporation in 1975.
After the independence of Angola and Mozambique, the important African market decreased tremendously and two Boeing 747s were sold in 1976.
In 1979, the company implemented a modernisation programme that also resulted with it being renamed TAP Air Portugal.
(From Wikipedia)
