Three more foreign airlines have applied to operate domestic flights in Brazil as Latin America’s largest air travel market continues to open up to new entrants. Routesonline looks at the growth of the Brazilian domestic market despite the suspension of Avianca Brasil’s operations.
Brazilian airline GOL is adding a tenth country to its network with the launch of a direct route to Ecuador. The São Paulo - Quito service is the result of a “decisive breakthrough” made at Routes Americas 2018, which took place in the Ecuadorian city in February.
United Airlines has raised its stake in Brazilian low-cost carrier Azul, citing connecting traffic as a reason behind the move. The deal comes as an impending US-Brazil open skies agreement looks set to increase services, routes and competition between the two countries.
Route rundown: GOL adds routes to Miami and Orlando, Hainan Airlines launches its first direct service between China and Spain, and Thai Air Asia X resumes Bangkok to Sapporo.
The carrier is reducing its capacity into Brazil this winter through route switches, frequency reductions and aircraft changes in preparation for what its vice-president of Latin America, Mexico and Caribbean, Nicolas Ferri describes as a “long cycle” economic slowdown in the country, in an interview posted on the airline’s website.
The likely move into regional Brazilian operations comes as the Government looks to roll-out a new incentive scheme which will partly-subsidise flights in this market. The regional aviation development program Programa de Desenvolvimento da Aviação Regional (PDAR) was launched last month.
GOL is the largest low-cost airline in Latin America and offers around 910 daily flights to 69 destinations, 15 international, across South America, the Caribbean and the United States, using a modern fleet of Boeing 737-700 and 737-800 Next Generation aircraft.
We took a look at the top 20 airlines in the world by operating carrier, analysing the network capacity in December 2013 against the same month this year.
