World2fly Portugal

Is World2fly Portugal safe?

Yes. World2fly Portugal has had no accident, it flies under the same European rules as TAP Air Portugal, and it passed IATA's IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary safety audit with its Spanish sister in 2025. The catch is the landing gear of its main aircraft. Twice, in June 2022 and September 2024, the same Airbus A330-300 needed an emergency landing at Lisbon because the gear or its doors would not close. Both flights landed safely, but one was a missed check before departure. We score World2fly Portugal 82, three points below World2fly (85) and four below TAP (86).

One brand, two airlines

World2fly was set up by W2M, the travel business of the Iberostar hotel group, to fly holidaymakers to the Caribbean. It began flying from Lisbon in July 2021 with a Spanish-registered A330, and by March 2022 it held a Portuguese air operator certificate. That Portuguese company, World 2 Fly Portugal, S.A., has its own IATA code (3P), its own ICAO designator (WPT) and its own call sign, NEW BLUE. It flies the Portuguese-registered A330-300 CS-WFP, from Lisbon and Porto to Punta Cana, La Romana, Cancún, Montego Bay and Varadero, and from 2026 to Zanzibar. Most seats are sold as package holidays by W2M's Portuguese tour brands, such as Newblue.

The line between the two companies is not always where passengers expect it. When World2fly brought an A350 to Lisbon for the Cancún route in 2023, it was EC-NOI, a Spanish jet on the Spanish certificate. Under our rules each event counts against the certificate that flew it: the Holguín tyre burst of January 2026 counts on World2fly, and the two Lisbon gear events below count here.

The two landing-gear emergencies

On 18 June 2022, CS-WFP left Lisbon as flight 3P1155 for Varadero with 386 passengers. The crew could not fully retract the landing gear, levelled off at about 6,000 feet and held over the coast for some two and a half hours to burn fuel before landing back on runway 21. Lisbon airport raised an orange alert and fire crews stood by. The airline's operations director first spoke of a sensor problem; later that evening a World2fly executive told CNN Portugal that a gear safety pin, used to lock the gear while an aircraft is parked for long periods, had been left in, and that the error was under internal investigation. The pin was removed and the jet reached Varadero about four hours late.

That matters more than the outcome suggests. Pins with red flags are meant to be caught on the walk-round before every departure, by both engineers and pilots. Missing one is a procedural error, not a broken part.

In September 2024, the same aircraft, flying 3P3154 from Punta Cana, asked for an emergency landing at Lisbon after a problem with an oil-pressure line on the rear right main landing gear stopped the gear doors from closing. It landed safely with emergency services standing by. The event forced four other flights, one from Jettime, two from easyJet and one from TAP, to divert to Faro.

We found no other events for the Portuguese company on AeroInside or in the Portuguese press. Portugal's investigation board, GPIAAF, blocked our access, so we could not see whether it opened a file on either event.

Flying for TAP

In spring 2026 TAP signed an ACMI deal (aircraft, crew, maintenance and insurance) for a World2fly A330-300 to cover late deliveries of its own aircraft. Kiosque da Aviação reported that the Portuguese company would fly it. From 1 July 2026 it took over TAP's daily Lisbon–Fortaleza flights from a Wamos Air A330-200. If you booked TAP to Fortaleza, you may well be on this airline. Under our rule for wet leases, events on those flights count here, not on TAP's page.

Who checks World2fly Portugal?

Portugal's civil aviation authority (ANAC) issues the certificate under EASA rules, and Portugal holds the FAA's Category 1FAA IASAThe US FAA's check of whether a country's aviation regulator meets ICAO standards. Category 1 means it does; Category 2 means it does not.More in the glossary rating. World2fly Portugal is not an IATA member, so it does not appear on IATA's member list, but IATA's IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary registry lists it as registered after a 2025 audit, valid until 4 September 2027. That bears out the company's statement that both its airlines renewed IOSA that year, so oversight scores 90, the level we give EU airlines with IOSA.

Before you fly World2fly Portugal

• Read the operator line. The same holiday from Lisbon can be flown by World2fly Portugal (3P) or World2fly (2W); the two have separate records and pages.
• Expect a long wait if the aircraft breaks. With few aircraft on the Portuguese certificate, a fault in the Caribbean can mean a day or more until a replacement arrives.
• Check the hurricane season. Most of the network is in the Caribbean, where storms close airports between August and October; book flexible travel insurance for those months.

How we scored it

Oversight backed by IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary (90) and a clean, if short, accident record (85) carry the score. Incidents (74) reflect the two gear emergencies, one caused by a pin left in. The fleet (70) is an older, single-type A330 operation, and the Caribbean network scores 80. Overall 82.