Brazil Travel Blog

Two airlines announce new flights to the capital of Peru, Lima.

TACA announces a direct flight to Lima from Rio de Janeiro from July 2 (the company has already direct flights from São Paulo to that destination). At the beginning, there will be four weekly flights.

LAN is increasing the number of flights from São Paulo to Lima to 10 weekly flights. It also promises improved connecting times in Lima for passengers flying to Caracas, Bogota and Quito.
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Read at Aquela Passagem!: TACA: Tarifa Promocional do Vôo Rio de Janeiro/Lima, LAN Aumenta Frequências para Peru.

Passengers beware! Brazil airline Varig has just announced it is cancelling all its flights from Mexico City, Madrid and Paris to Brazil. The flight from Mexico City to São Paulo will cease to operate on May 11, the flight from Madrid to São Paulo on May 12, and the flight from Paris to São Paulo on June 9. Be very careful as chances are the company will continue selling tickets for dates beyond the ones they will be operating flights on those routes.

Once again, we have to advice travellers to be extra careful when buying flights with Varig. The company announces and cancels routes on a whim, and the passenger is always caught unawares.

On our last trip from Congonhas airport, in São Paulo, we were lucky enough to take off on the direction of the Moema neighbourhood, where a high concentration of high-rises is found. On the approach route, we also went through the same neighbourhood. With my compact digital camera I shot two videos of both the take-off and the landing stages. As you will be able to tell, the aircraft shook quite a bit - it was cloudy and with gusts of wind.

Bear in mind Congonhas airport is a bit of an anomaly. An incredibly busy airport bang in the middle of a heavily built city, as you will be able to see on the satellite image:

Show larger map

The first video shows the first seconds after taking-off from Congonhas on a north-west direction (depending on the time of the day the video might take a while to load; load it first, watch it then):

despegando de Congonhas from tony galvez on Vimeo.

The second video shows the final approach to Congonhas, when it feels as if the airplane wing could be touching at any moment the roofs of the skyscrappers.

aterrizando en Congonhas from tony galvez on Vimeo.

David Neeleman, founder of the U.S. airline JetBlue, has publicly announced the creation of a new Brazilian low-cost airline. The name of the company hasn’t been defined yet. In actual fact, the first marketing drive by the new company was to launch of a contest to choose the name of the new company. The public will choose, through the você escolhe website, the name of the new company (vote opened only to holders of a Brazilian CPF card). The person who suggests the name that will eventually become the chosen one will win the right to fly with the airline for free during the rest of his life!

David Neeleman has eluded stringent government regulations preventing the investment of foreign nationals and companies on the commercial aviation sector because he was actually born in São Paulo and is a Brazilian passport holder.

The arrival of a new company is to be welcome, in times when the duopoly GOL/TAM seems to asfixiate any attempt to create of a real open market in Brazil. But the euphoria shown by some journalists seems a bit outplaced. We are all happy by the arrival of a new player, but only time will tell whether Neeleman is the King Midas some people have purported him to be.

As soon as we find out more about routes, prices and other aspects regarding the new company, we will let you know here at the Brazil Travel Blog.

Brazilian airline TAM has revealed the prices and conditions for its Airpass 2008. The information can be read here: TAM Brazil Airpass 2008.

The main change - leaving aside a price increase, is that the maximum period of time allowed between the first and final flight has gone from 20 days to 30 days. A sensible change.

BY PLANE

The main airlines (TAM, Gol and Varig) fly to Curitiba from São Paulo.

BY BUS

The trip lasts for about six hours and leaves from the Terminal Tietê bus station in São Paulo. One way from R$52. A couple of companies going to Curitiba are Cometa e Itapemirim. Departures all throughout the day.

On September 20 the Brazilian airline Varig will begin operating a new intercontinental flight from São Paulo (leaving Guarulhos at 23:59) to Paris (arriving in Charles de Gaulle at 16h20) and then onto Rome (arriving in Leonardo da Vinci at 19h15). On the way to Brazil, flights will leave from Rome at 20h50, arriving in Paris at 22h45 and then in São Paulo at 06h50.

Along with the announcement of the new flight, the company declared its intention to operate flights to London and Madrid before the end of the year.

We read the news first in Aquela Passagem!, Rodrigo Purisch’s always up-to-date blog - he published the news days before the rest of the media. Rodrigo has further details of the flight on his blog (in Portuguese).

Quite interesting, hardly a month has gone by since the Congonhas crash, and many of the announcements made by the government on the aftermath of the disaster have either been forgotten (new airport for São Paulo) or been completely ignored (”no new international flights operating from Guarulhos”), as it is the case here.

The company Costa Verde has quite a number of daily services from Rio to Angra dos Reis (a three-hour journey), and a slightly smaller number of buses going to Paraty every day (a four-hour journey).

You can check the timetables on its website. Buses leave from the Rodoviária Novo Rio.

[No te olvides de consultar el listado de preguntas ya respondidas en el blog, aquí]

How do I get from Porto Alegre to São Paulo by bus?

There are several companies doing the trip. Itapemirim is one of them. Prices from R$125 one way. The trip takes 18 hours.

[Don't forget there is a list of all the questions & answers published in the blog here]

UPDATE: see on this blog TAM Airpass 2008, with information in English on the newest TAM offering.

A friend of De Viaje a Brasil - Spanish version of this blog - got in touch with TAM in Spain last week and got sent a Word document that contains all the information you need to know about the TAM Airpass. Unfortunately, it is in Spanish only, but I’m making it available for download in case it’s of any help to any reader here. You can download the file here: TAM airpass 2007.

There seems to be some confusion about the way TAM interprets the use of its coupons. At one stage, TAM Spain told a reader of the blog every time the plane touches down you use one coupon. But today another friend of the blog has told us he purchased the Airpass in Belgium and has been able to use one coupon to fly from A to B with a stopover in between.

Best thing is to get in touch with TAM directly. If you can really fly from A to B and use only one coupon regardless of the number of stopovers the Airpass is an interesting alternative indeed - if only for long-distance flights.