TAP Air Portugal has launched a new nonstop service connecting San Francisco International Airport (SFO) to the mid-Atlantic archipelago of the Azores.
The inaugural flight on this route took off on June 3, 2025, from Lajes Airport (TER), located on the island of Terceira, and landed in San Francisco 10 hours and seven minutes later.
The seasonal weekly service is operated by an Airbus A330-900neo fitted with 298 seats (34 in business, 96 in premium economy, which TAP calls “Economy Xtra”, and 168 in economy class).
While this is the only direct link between the Azores and California, the Azores enjoy a number of nonstop links to North American destinations.
In addition to the growing popularity of the Azores as a holiday destination, the archipelago’s location in the middle of the Atlantic has meant that historically a large number of its residents looked west for opportunities. The US and Canada are home to several hundred thousand people of Azorean descent.
Local airline Azores Airlines operates services to Boston-Logan (BOS), Toronto-Pearson (YYZ), Montreal-Trudeau (YUL) and New York-JFK from both Terceira and Ponta Delgada (PDL), the archipelago’s main international gateway.
United Airlines also operates a seasonal service between Newark (EWR) and Ponta Delgada.
TAP Air Portugal has recently expanded its US footprint with the launch of nonstop flights between Lisbon and Los Angeles International (LAX) and between Porto (POR), Portugal’s second largest city, and Boston. The latter is operated by an Airbus A321LR single-aisle aircraft.
