The São Tomé and Príncipe airline, STP Airways, will resume direct scheduled flights between São Tomé and Portugal on 3 July, operated by Portuguese EuroAtlantic airways.
The flights will be operated with euroAtlantic airways “on a code-share basis with a weekly flight, on Fridays”, the Portuguese airline said on Monday in a statement.
The Lisbon-Sao Tome flight leaves at 06:00 and is scheduled to arrive at 10:50 local time. From Sao Tome to Lisbon it will depart at 13:25 and arrive at 20:35.
As on EuroAtlantic’s scheduled flights to Guinea-Bissau, STP, on intercontinental flights allows passengers to carry “two hold bags with 30 kilos of luggage, plus one piece with 0.5 kilos in the cabin”.
“With the resumption of direct links to Portugal, in addition to the resumption of economic and social activities, the country expects, in the segment of sustainable tourism, the return of visitors for the capture of foreign exchange”, highlighted the note.
In addition, STP flights also “allow medical and hospital equipment to reach the country more quickly” and resume imports by air.
STP Airways warned its customers, however, that until a vaccine for the new coronavirus is discovered, “there are new ways to travel safely, rules that airlines” have been “forced to adopt.
Thus, passengers on STP flights over the age of four are required to submit a Covid-19 test 72 hours before departure and to wear a surgical mask at the terminal and during the flight, and must have a ‘stock’ that allows them to change after four hours.
In addition, on arrival in Sao Tome, they are subject to a thermal screening.
Among the African countries that have Portuguese as their official language, Equatorial Guinea leads in number of infections and deaths (2,001 cases and 32 deaths), followed by Guinea-Bissau (1,654 cases and 24 deaths), Cape Verde (1,165 cases and 12 deaths), Mozambique (883 cases and six deaths), São Tomé and Príncipe (713 cases and 13 deaths) and Angola (267 infected and 11 deaths).
