Well, I recently took a short break in Madeira, and flew to the capital, Funchal, from Heathrow. The flight was via Lisbon.

I did my usual trick of turning up really early at the airport. Heathrow is only a few miles down the road from where I live, so I had plenty of time.

The first thing I found was that TAP had moved to Terminal 1 only the day before (Terminal 2 is being redeveloped). However, it did not delay me by more than a few minutes.

Check-in was routine. My bag was checked through to Funchal.

The flight was on-time, but once we were all on the plane, there was a short delay due to "airport congestion".

The plane was an Airbus A-320. I like those, but I was alarmed to find that my seat belt was really loose, even with the buckle done up! Not good.

Nonetheless we were soon under way, taking off towards the west, climbing out over the M25, then swinging south, passing close to my home town of Slough, before climbing out over Berkshire and Hampshire. We reached cruising altitude somewhere over the channel, before clipping the coast of France and then flying over the Bay of Biscay and down to Portugal.

I wasn't very comfortable, partly because the guy in front tilted his seat back virtually into my lap, and also because I am 6ft 5 ins, which means I do not usually have ample leg room. Also, the stewardess had nothing vegetarian for me when it came to the snack.

The Lisbon flight took about two and a quarter hours, and having reported the loose seat belt (see above) I then had to transfer to the Madeira flight. This was on a chunky little Airbus A-319, which was a nice plane. Not such a powerful takeoff as the A-320, but we climbed to 39,000 feet and it was a very smooth flight.

I think the TAP pilots have been practising their landings because both landings were perfection. Nonetheless I found the service to be somewhat lacking. Announcements are made bilingually (Portuguese and English) and the stewardess did not speak very clearly at all when it came to the English. A lot of the time, I did not understand a word of it.

All in all, my first time with TAP was a rather underwhelming experience.