Brazil is a huge country and odds are that you will be needing domestic flights to get from your international gateway, perhaps Rio, Sao Paulo or Manaus to the nearest airport to your ultimate destination.  These flights can often be bought in advance for good prices or in some cases redeemed with miles in partner programs.

GOL

This airline is a great option for international travelers because they accept payments with foreign credit cards and you don’t need a Brazilian CPF (Brazilian tax ID like a Social Security or Tax File Number).  I also recommend GOL because as you will see in the last part of this post they will step up and look after you in case of IRROPS.  In the opening screen, be sure you select the country where you have your credit card.  I had planned to paste the route map here but for some reason the links aren’t working on the GOL site so here’s the link anyways.  I have highlighted below some airports that will be of interest to eco-tourists.

GOL Destinations

GOL has their own frequent flyer program called Smiles.  When we did our trip in Sept 2012, we had booked domestic segments as part of our international flights using AAdvantage but GOL no longer partners with them.  Currently, they partner with Delta, Air France, KLM and Qatar Airways.  From these programs, the one most people would be using is Delta.  They charge 10,000 miles each way for a domestic trip in Brazil with a round-trip required.

BOOKING A FLIGHT

If you have selected the USA or OTHER as your base country, you will have an English display.  Let’s take the popular route of Sao Paulo – Cuiaba (gateway to the Pantanal) as an example.

.

If you are lucky, there will be some promotional fares in the display at very attractive rates.  In this case, there is a promo for $49 but the catch is that you have to make a connection and arrive at a very inconvenient hour.  The cheapest non-stop is $63 but still an inconvenient arrival time but might be worth it if you stay near the airport.

.

To continue with our example, let’s go with the cheapest non-stop.  Now we see they added the tax on and are trying to upsell you to a flexible flight.

.

Scroll down, accept the rules and click continue.  In the next screen unless you want to set up an account, scroll down, click on “I want to make a purchase without registering” and fill it out with your passport number in “Laissez Passer”.  You can also add a frequent flyer number if you are in any program GOL partners with.

.

I filled out some fake info for the passenger name, address and passport details to get to the next screen.  Select your seat here.

.

After choosing the best seat they offer you, continue to the payment screen.  They seem to be offering only Visa and Mastercard.  I know they had Amex in the past since I used Amex for my domestic flights so they may bring that option back.

Enter your card details, click Confirm and it will give you a confirmation number.  At this point, I will X out of the tab since I am not really buying a ticket now.  If you are on a budget, keep checking back as they change the promos every week.  Be sure to read the restrictions on the promo fares and make sure they are acceptable, otherwise you may want to use a flexible fare.

GOL SERVICE

On some flights, we were given a snack free and on others they had Buy-On-Board menus.  The planes on the domestic routes are all 3 x 3 seating which is not my preference since it means couples have to sit with a stranger on a full flight but most domestic Brazilian carriers are the same.  They won’t let you sit in an exit row if you don’t speak Portuguese.

We had IRROPS (irregular operations) twice on our trip and both times GOL stepped up and made it right for us.  This is one of the most important things I look at when choosing an airline.  I like to see ground staff who are empowered to solve problems.

When we first arrived in Sao Paulo on the GOL flight from Buenos Aires, we had a 5 hour layover in the wee hours of the morning.  Not enough time to go to a hotel but long enough to be uncomfortable.  We were connecting to Vitoria where we planned to rent a car and drive to Sooretama/Linhares for birding.  The flight was routed GRU-GIG-VIX.  Terrible, I know but it was tagged onto the main international redemption so at least it was free!  The GRU-GIG flight was cancelled and they had rebooked us on another one that would have gotten us to Vitoria closer to noon and we would have missed an evening of birding by the time we drove out there.  I asked them if they could get us on any better connection.  They ended up rebooking us on a direct flight from Sao Paulo’s other airport CGH and giving us a free taxi to the other airport.  We arrived around the same time we had originally booked.

The second IRROPS was on the return flight as we had finished our visit to Brazil and were headed home.  It was a pretty bad routing because AA wouldn’t let us have more than 24 hours in GRU even if they had to tag on an extra connection.  The routing home was BEL (Belem) –  GIG (on a flight that stopped in GRU before heading onwards to GIG) – GRU-SCL.  The flight from Belem to GRU had a mechanical problem and we were forced to land in Brasilia while they got us a new plane.  We were waiting just over an hour and I was panicking over missing that ridiculous connection in GIG and having the rest of our itinerary cancelled.  I explained this to the flight crew.  They passed it on to the ground staff.  The new plane was going only to GRU with people going on to GIG given overnight accommodations and rebooked to GIG the next morning.  I explained that we really didn’t want to go to GIG and our ultimate destination with GOL was SCL where we had a connection to SYD on QF (in business class!).  The Brasilia ground staff took my printout and said they would sort it out.

Sort it out, they did!  When we landed in GRU, there were ground staff passing out hotel vouchers and new tickets to the normal GIG passengers and they were expecting us.  Since the ticket was originally issued by AA, they couldn’t change it on their own and has to call AA for permission to change it.  By the time we got there, they had cancelled the unwanted GRU-GIG-GRU and kept the GRU-SCL intact.  They also gave us a hotel voucher for the nearby Hotel Matiz with meals up to the departure time of our flight to SCL.  The hotel has its own shuttle bus.  This turned out to be a lucky chance for us as we avoided some unnecessary flights, got a free room and a place to relax and shower after visiting the Sao Paulo Zoo!  Major kudos to GOL for looking after its customer, highly recommended!