Avianca Airlines is the second largest airline group in Latin America, behind LATAM Group. The airline has bases in Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Perú, Guatemala, and Honduras. The airline is owned by the Synergy Group of Brazil. They also own Avianca Brazil, an independent airline that uses the Avianca name. These two airlines cooperate very heavily on routes throughout the Americas and the world. The largest growing partner is Avianca Brazil. They recently began flights from Sao Paulo to Miami on their A330. As the airline continues to expand, Avianca Brazil launches JFK flights on December 15, 2017.

 

What to Expect

Avianca Brazil’s flights to New York will fly from Sao Paulo Guarulhos. The airline will use an A330-200 with 237 seats. This aircraft has 32 lie flat business class seats, and 205 economy seats. The aircraft has the same business class seats Avianca has on their 787s. The airline will fly the route daily, with the following schedule:

O68500 Sao Paulo to New York JFK departing 11:45PM arriving 6:45AM (+1 day)

O68501 New York JFK to Sao Paulo departing 11:30PM arriving 12:30PM (+1 day)

Avianca New Business Class, from OMAAT

Avianca New Business Class, from OMAAT

Avianca Brazil Expansion Plans

The airline is the latest entrant to the Brazilian long haul market. Local airlines that fly to the US include Azul and TAM, as well as Delta, United and American. The latter of these has the most flights of a US carrier to Brazil. Avianca Brazil is part of the Star Alliance, and has since started a stronger cooperation with United. This will help both carriers increase their footprint in the region, as well as expand opportunities for customers to fly beyond JFK and Miami. Avianca Brazil has also ordered the A350, with the intention of being able to add routes to more US destinations as well as possibly expand to Europe.

Avianca A330

Avianca A330

Landing Thoughts

I am glad to see Avianca Brazil expand. I think it is a good sign that the Brazilian economy is beginning to stabilize. There is something that confuses me, however, why Avianca Brazil does not take advantage and strengthens their partnership with United. Miami and New York JFK have stronger demand for flights, but United could feed them passengers from Newark or Houston. I assume there is enough demand to justify them flying these routes over IAH and EWR. In the future, I can see Avianca Brazil starting flights to IAH, EWR and other United hubs.

 

What do you think? Are you excited to fly on Avianca Brazil’s new flight to JFK? Where should they expand to next? Let us know!

 

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H/T: One Mile at a Time

 

Images from: One Mile at a Time, Wikimedia Commons