US–Portugal Flights 2026: Every Nonstop Route and Carrier, and the 2.6M Passengers Nobody Counts in Seats

The inventory: 23 routes, five airlines, nine US airports

In summer 2026 five airlines flew nonstop between the United States and Portugal: TAP, United, Delta, American and Azores Airlines. Between them they operated 23 carrier routes on 18 airport pairs. Nine US airports had a direct flight: Newark, New York JFK, Boston, Miami, Washington Dulles, Chicago O'Hare, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. On the Portuguese side six airports did: Lisbon, Porto, Faro, Funchal, Ponta Delgada and Terceira.

TAP is the largest network by routes. It flies from Lisbon to eight US cities and from Porto to two, Newark and Boston. Los Angeles was added on 16 May 2025 and became year-round, three times a week, in the 2025/26 winter. Orlando follows on 29 October 2026, three times a week on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays, which makes nine US destinations. In 2019 TAP served seven: Newark, JFK, Boston, Miami, Washington, Chicago and San Francisco. In 2015 it served two.

United is the largest US airline in Portugal by airports served. In 2026 it flies to five Portuguese airports, all from Newark except one daily flight from Washington to Lisbon: Lisbon daily, Porto twice daily from 22 May to 23 September, Ponta Delgada daily at the peak, Faro four times a week from 15 May and Funchal three times a week from 16 May. In the peak week from 29 June to 6 September that adds up to 42 flights, six a day, which is where United's "up to six daily flights" comes from. On 9 June 2027 it adds Terceira, three times a week until 5 September, its sixth Portuguese airport.

Delta runs three routes. New York JFK and Boston to Lisbon are daily on A330s, and JFK to Porto started on 21 May 2026 as a daily Boeing 767-300ER. Delta said in 2025 that its two Lisbon routes offered more than 7,800 weekly seats, which checks: two daily flights each way on a 281-seat A330-900neo is 7,868. American flies a single route, Philadelphia to Lisbon, daily and year-round, and adds Philadelphia to Porto from 28 March 2027 with the narrow-body A321XLR, 155 seats.

Azores Airlines, the international arm of the SATA group, flies from Boston and New York JFK to Ponta Delgada and lists Boston to Terceira. Its summer 2026 notice gives "more than 50 weekly flights" to Boston, New York, Toronto and Montreal combined, from 29 March to 31 October. It has published no figure for the US routes alone. Its North American network shrank in 2025, when it dropped Funchal and Porto to Boston and New York, and the airline is in the middle of a forced sale described in our Azores air access article.

Five airport pairs have competition: Lisbon to Newark, JFK, Boston and Washington, and Porto to Newark. Every other pair has one airline. Faro and Funchal depend on United alone, the Azores on Azores Airlines and United, and Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Miami and Orlando on TAP alone. Breeze, JetBlue and Alaska fly none of the routes. JetBlue told the US Department of Transportation in August 2025 that Lisbon had refused its slot requests "repeatedly" since 2023 and that it was weighing legal action against Portugal. We found no ruling on the complaint.

What Eurostat counts: 2.62 million passengers and a 1.99 seasonal ratio

Eurostat's avia_paexcc table records every passenger carried on a flight between Portugal and the United States, both directions, whatever their nationality. It counted 2,617,303 in 2025, up 5.9% on 2024 and 64.3% on 2019. That is 3.5% of all Portuguese air passengers. Arrivals in Portugal were 1,296,509, which matches the "1.3 million disembarked passengers, +5.7%" on Turismo de Portugal's market page. The series also records 13,533 commercial flights in 2025, up 2.7%, an average of about 130 a week in each direction across the year and about 165 a week in the third quarter.

Two things stand out in the series. The first is that growth did not stop at recovery. Portugal–US traffic passed its 2019 level in 2022 and then added a further 945,897 passengers in three years. The second is that the market is becoming less seasonal. In 2019 the busiest quarter carried 2.63 times as many passengers as the quietest. In 2025 the ratio was 1.99. In the first quarter of 2026 passengers rose 6.7% on 3.5% more flights, the latest official data available.

At route level the latest year is 2024. Eurostat lists twelve Portugal–US airport pairs with published traffic, which add up to 2,413,791 passengers, 97.7% of that year's national total. Lisbon's eight routes carried 2,027,025, or 84.0%. Newark–Lisbon was the busiest single route at 456,445 passengers, about 1,250 a day. Washington–Lisbon grew fastest from 2019, by 134.8%, and Philadelphia–Lisbon by 115.2%.

The monthly route data for 2024 show how different the routes are. Miami–Lisbon is almost flat through the year, with its busiest month only 1.48 times its quietest. JFK and Newark to Lisbon sit near 1.6. Washington–Lisbon swings 4.3 times, from 7,342 passengers in January to 31,280 in July, and Newark–Porto 6.2 times. Every Lisbon route carried passengers in every month of 2024. The Porto and Azores routes were far more seasonal, and Newark–Ponta Delgada flew only from June to September.

Eurostat cannot answer the seat question. Its seat measure for Portugal is empty, so load factors cannot be calculated at route or national level. Passengers per flight, a mix of aircraft size and occupancy, rose from 178 in 2019 to 193 in 2025. The route list also misses Faro, Funchal and Terceira, and in 2019 it covered only 79.0% of the national total, so route sums cannot be compared across years. For trends, use the national series.

Lisbon's ceiling and the move to Porto

Lisbon's dominance of the US market is a product of TAP's hub and a problem for everyone else. Humberto Delgado airport is capped at 38 movements an hour. For summer 2026 airlines requested about 164,000 slots and were allocated about 147,000, with 20,000 on a waiting list, according to the air navigation provider NAV. An American airline that wants a new Lisbon route has to find a slot first, and JetBlue's case shows that it may not. Our Lisbon airport capacity analysis sets out how the ceiling works and why movements fell in 2026.

Porto has absorbed the growth Lisbon cannot. Its single published US route, United and TAP from Newark, carried 186,988 passengers in 2024, up 51.2% on 2019. In 2026 three more services arrived or grew: Delta's daily JFK flight from 21 May, United's second daily Newark rotation from 22 May and TAP's Boston route, which becomes year-round at two flights a week from 25 October. American follows from Philadelphia in March 2027. ANA said in September 2025 that the US market at Porto had more than doubled since 2019, a figure it has not published in absolute terms. Porto's own record year is covered in our Porto airport statistics.

The winter schedule shows how thin Porto's US link still is in January. Delta's JFK–Porto service drops to three a week and ends on 3 January 2027, United suspends Newark–Porto from 4 January to 18 February, and TAP's Boston flight runs twice a week. In the six weeks after New Year, Porto's US connections come down to TAP alone. Lisbon keeps daily service from United at Newark, Delta at JFK and American at Philadelphia, plus TAP's network, although Delta's Boston route and United's Washington route also pause from early January to mid-February.

A permanent fix for Lisbon is a decade away. The new Luís de Camões airport is planned to open in 2037 on ANA's timetable, and ANA's environmental study for raising the current runway to 40 movements an hour was submitted in June 2026. Until then the transatlantic market can grow at Lisbon only through larger aircraft, fuller flights and shifts in the slot mix, and at Porto through new frequencies.

The islands and the south: one airline each way

The Azores have the deepest American connection of any Portuguese region, and the reason is family. US Census Bureau figures for 2020, as compiled by secondary sources, put the number of people of Portuguese ancestry at about 1.45 million, with 265,355 in Massachusetts and 83,373 in Rhode Island, where they are 7.9% of the population. New England's Portuguese communities are largely Azorean in origin. That is why Boston–Ponta Delgada appears in Eurostat's records from 2015 and why Ponta Delgada's three US routes carried 199,778 passengers in 2024, 7.4% of the airport's traffic, a higher share than Lisbon's 5.8%.

The Azorean routes are also the least stable. Boston–Ponta Delgada carried 107,172 passengers in 2024, still 4.3% below 2019. JFK–Ponta Delgada more than doubled over the same period, while United's Newark–Ponta Delgada fell 20.6% in 2024 alone. Delta flew JFK–Ponta Delgada in 2018 and 2019 and left. Azores Airlines lost €53.9 million in 2025 and is being sold under an EU state-aid deadline of 31 December 2026.

Faro and Funchal are newer and smaller. United started Newark–Faro on 23 May 2025 after postponing it from 2024, and flies it four times a week in 2026. Newark–Funchal started in June 2025 and runs three times a week from 16 May 2026 on a Boeing 737 MAX 8, with United claiming 19% more seats than in 2025 against an unstated base. Neither route appears in Eurostat's route list, so their passenger numbers are not published. Our airport articles for Faro and Madeira put the routes in the context of each airport's traffic.

TAP, Lufthansa and the American joint ventures

North America is TAP's second-largest long-haul region after South America. It includes Toronto and Montreal and made up 22% of its 2024 revenue against 12% in 2019, according to the prospectus the government's holding company Parpública published for the sale in September 2025. That share implies roughly €933 million of 2024 revenue (derived). TAP carried 1.59 million North American passengers in 2024, up 8.9%. It publishes no figure for the United States alone.

On 14 October 2026 the Council of Ministers chose Lufthansa to buy 49.9% of TAP for €1,201 million, including the 5% employee tranche and its catering and handling subsidiaries. Air France-KLM bid €1,038 million plus up to €100 million tied to results. TAP stays in Star Alliance, and Lufthansa will ask to bring it into its antitrust-immunised transatlantic joint venture with United and Air Canada. United wrote to the Portuguese government supporting the idea. Our TAP privatisation explainer, written before the decision, describes the two bids and the state's retained majority.

For the US routes the decision matters more than the price. If TAP joins the joint venture, its schedule and fares on routes it shares with United, Newark and Washington to Lisbon and Newark to Porto, would be planned together and revenue pooled. That requires US antitrust immunity and approval in Brussels. The finance minister has said the EU review could take 18 to 24 months, which puts closing in 2028. Delta, whose Atlantic joint venture with Air France-KLM and Virgin Atlantic lost the chance to absorb TAP, would then face a Star bloc on two of its three Portuguese routes, JFK and Boston to Lisbon.

What travellers will see first is codeshares and loyalty changes, not new aircraft. TAP's Stopover programme, which lets transatlantic passengers break the journey in Lisbon or Porto, drew more than 193,000 travellers in the first half of 2025. TAP says 6% of its US tickets included a stopover. How many US–Portugal passengers stay in Portugal and how many change planes for Europe, Africa or Brazil is not published by anyone. The only related figure, that 52% of TAP's Americas–Europe passengers connect through Lisbon, includes Brazil.

2026: fuel, fares and the July dip

The 2026 season was shaped by fuel. Jet fuel prices in the US roughly doubled after the war with Iran began in late February, peaking at $4.88 a gallon in early April against $2.50 before it, according to the Argus index. United's chief executive said fares needed to rise 15–20%. Kayak's data put the average international fare from the US at $956 in June 2026, against $776 a year earlier. Portugal's tourism confederation, CTP, said in September that US seat supply to Portugal had grown only slightly in 2026 and that fares were higher.

Nights spent by American residents in Portuguese tourist accommodation fell 3.1% in July 2026, about 19,300 fewer, after rising 2.9% in June, according to INE's flash estimate reproduced by Dinheiro Vivo. Nights in Grande Lisboa fell 6.0% and in the Algarve 6.7%, while the Norte gained 9.3%, the region served by the new Delta and United capacity at Porto. Over January to July US nights were still 3.4% up. The currency did not cause the dip: the dollar averaged 1.1417 to the euro in July 2026 against 1.1677 in July 2025, which made Portugal slightly cheaper for Americans. Higher fares, a strong July 2025 base (+14.1%) and Lisbon's ceiling are the explanations offered by the industry, and none has been measured.

Border processing added friction. The EU's Entry/Exit System began in October 2025 and became fully operational on 10 April 2026. Portugal suspended it at Lisbon for three months from 30 December 2025 after queues of several hours, and paused biometric checks on departures at Lisbon, Porto and Faro on 11–12 April 2026. No official queue data by nationality exist. ETIAS, the travel authorisation Americans will eventually need, has no start date: the last-quarter-2026 target that appeared in our own airport files was removed from the official site in July 2026.

What the counts miss, and ten claims tested

The inventory and the passenger series together answer most questions about the market, but not the one airlines and tourism boards argue about. Without seats there is no load factor, without load factors no measure of whether the market is overserved, and without an origin and destination split no way to say how many of the 2.6 million passengers are Americans visiting Portugal. The TravelBI market page gives the shares of "American tourists carried" by airline in 2025, TAP 29.4%, United 14.8%, Delta 10.3%, American 6.1% and SATA 5.6%, which leaves a third with other carriers, presumably via other European hubs. The page does not say whether these are passengers or seats or how they were measured.

Several popular figures fail once their scope is checked. A tour operator's travel blog still says seven US cities have direct flights; there were nine in summer 2026 and there will be ten from 29 October. A Madeira newspaper said in April 2026 that United serves Lisbon, Porto and Ponta Delgada year-round; only the Lisbon route is. TAP's "more than 100 weekly flights" to North America includes Canada and Cancún. And two figures from our own files were wrong in scope: TAP's 1.59 million passengers are North American, not American, and ETIAS is not starting in late 2026.

One claim holds up better than expected. CTP's president said in September 2026 that American nights in Portugal had practically doubled since 2019. Eurostat counts 2.72 million in 2019 and 5.48 million in 2025, an increase of 101.6%. Direct air passengers rose 64.3% over the same period. The difference suggests that Americans stay longer, arrive more often through Madrid, Paris, London or Frankfurt, or both. Neither effect can be separated in the published data. Another claim, that the US is Portugal's fastest-growing market, is overstated: it led growth among the large markets in some months of 2025, but INE's releases do not show it as the fastest overall, and in July 2026 its nights fell.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers. From the US East Coast, Lisbon is about seven hours eastbound and the choice of airline is wide: TAP, United, Delta and American all fly daily from the New York area or Philadelphia, and Boston has TAP, Delta and Azores Airlines. From the West Coast and the South, TAP is the only nonstop option, from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Miami and, from 29 October, Orlando. If you want Porto, Faro, Madeira or the Azores without a change in Lisbon, fly between mid-May and September; in January and February Porto's US flights come down to TAP's, and Faro and Funchal have no US flights at all. Register in the Entry/Exit System on arrival and allow time for it; no ETIAS is needed yet. Our Lisbon travel guide covers the city once you land.

Tourism businesses and investors. The US market's growth has outrun its official measurement. Capacity is concentrated at a slot-capped Lisbon, and most routes added since 2024 serve Porto, Faro, Funchal and the Azores, which are seasonal and served by one or two airlines each. A business counting on American visitors outside Lisbon in winter is counting on a handful of TAP flights. The Lufthansa decision makes a United–TAP joint venture likely from 2028; that would coordinate the overlapping Newark and Washington routes and could thin them. Watch three thresholds: whether United and Delta keep their winter Porto service in 2027/28, whether Azores Airlines' new owner keeps the Boston and New York routes, and whether US nights recover in the second half of 2026 once the fuel shock passes.

Journalists and analysts. Citable figures: 2,617,303 passengers on Portugal–US flights in 2025, +5.9% on 2024 and +64.3% on 2019, on 13,533 flights (Eurostat avia_paexcc); 2,027,025 passengers on Lisbon's eight US routes in 2024, 84.0% of published US-route traffic (avia_par_pt); nine US airports in summer 2026 and ten from 29 October; United at five Portuguese airports, six in 2027; Q3-to-Q1 seasonal ratio 1.99 in 2025 against 2.63 in 2019. Do not cite a seat count or load factor for the market, because none is published, and do not treat TAP's North American figures or its 52% connection rate as US numbers. For the series, this article adds a finding that recurs across Portugal's airports: the route and seat data that would show who carries whom are either unpublished or two years old. The national airport traffic report sets the US market against the other 71 million passengers.