Azul increases flights and is to start operations in Rio from Galeão
Valor Econômico 02/11/2009
Azul will start flying to Rio de Janeiro, even if from the Galeão airport instead of from the Santos Dumont one, the central airport of the capital of Rio de Janeiro which is currently restricted to some kinds of operations. Besides Rio, the airline will include four other cities in its flights, all of them with connection to Campinas (SP), between the 18th of this month and the beginning of April. Fortaleza, Manaus, Recife, and Navegantes (SC). The company still waits for the result of a lawsuit which is under the examination of the court of appeals in order to fly from the Santos Dumont airport. Should it not be granted the court authorization, it will start five daily flights from Campinas to Galeão on April 1st, where it has already requested the flight schedule. Until March, the National Civil Aviation Agency (ANAC) should also decide on the opening of the Santos Dumont airport - currently, the airport is only open to flights to Congonhas and flights made with turboprop planes for up to 50 passengers. Azul currently makes 30 flights a day, connecting Campinas to Salvador, Porto Alegre, Curitiba, and Vitória. With the increase of the flights, there will be another 26 daily operations. The company has five planes and two more are in the final stage to integrate the fleet. Until July, they will total 12, all of them being Embraer 190 and 195 models. The company, which started operating December 15, said it transported 11 thousand people in the first 15 days of that month, with an average of occupation of 45%. With these numbers, it was the sixth of the market. In January, however, it transported 45 thousand passengers, with a 59% occupation of its seats. "In February we will have more than that", said David Neelerman, founder of Azul. On Monday, according to him, the company broke its record of sales in one day, with 4.3 thousand tickets sold. Neeleman affirmed the plan is to start profiting in the second half of the year, in spite of the true air fare war the company faces with market leaders TAM and Gol. Since the beginning of its operations, Azul has lowered its prices. Besides that, it has been offering free bus transportation from Alphaville and São Paulo to Campinas and it starts a sales promotion this week which will give discounts in tickets.