Azul Launching Nonstop Flights To New York

Will they shack up with B6 in T5?

Fantastic news. Low capacity between US-Brazil has led to absurdly high fares. Not too psyched to fly through VCP but should at least take some of the pressure off of other flights.

Viracopos? Thats like flying in Trenton airport as a "NYC" destination

@James S - AD has a huge hub at VCP, offering connections to a lot of cities not served by any airline through GRU. And they do offer free buses to São Paulo (not the quickest option, but the buses are comfortable), which takes about one hour to the city.

Maybe its a long enough layover for a "legal" crew rest, so the same crew works both ways?

They also probably can't get slots (and/or gates) any earlier in the evening at JFK when the airport is pretty packed, though something later in the morning for the landing would presumably be available. I don't know if there are any curfew issues at Viracopos?

I've flown on their VCP-FLL route and the service is great. Plus as a smaller airport VCP provides a more comfy experience than GRU. And sometimes getting to GRU from Sao Paulo's financial district can take just as long as getting to VCP.

I love Azul! They are an awesome airline.

@Lucky I would recommend flying a domestic flight (like most Brazilian airlines, they only offer economy on domestic routes) in addition to an international flight since the experience is just as great. Maybe you could fly into Belo Horizonte-Confins airport and then connect on to a domestic flight to Sao Paulo-Congonhas (cool airport to land at since it is right in the city)

There are two Marriott/Starwood properties in the city that you could review, including the Renaissance and the Sheraton WTC.

"It’s cool to see Azul expand their US service beyond New York."

The article is about the airline expanding service to New York.

I've flown domestically with Azul a couple of times for work. Even in economy, the service was solid and friendly. That's something that's sorely lacking on most American operations if you're behind the wings.

James S - I laughed out loud a bit at that one. That being said, at least the terminal at VCP doesn’t utilize a double-wide trailer as a baggage claim like TTN.
I’d pay to see Lucky fly Frontier into TTN. What a convenient yet stuck in the Middle Ages airport

Many people might not know where Viracopos is located. It was Sao Paulo's international airport until the 1990's. It was kind of far, like Mirabel (Montreal) or Dulles (Washington, DC), so people hated it and rather fly to Rio and connect. Then GRU was opened to passenger traffic and VCP became about as busy as YMX Mirabel. (Oh, IAD didn't get closer to Washington, DC but Washington grew and the suburbs got closer to IAD).

I wouldn't fly to VCP unless the airfare was good and I studied how to get from the airport by bus.

They should try to get rights JFK-YVR, like Cathay Pacific has. So

VCP-JFK 830 pm - 5:30 am + 1 day
JFK-YVR 7:45 am - 11:15 am

YVR-JFK 12:30 pm - 10:00 pm (or 1 pm-10:30 pm)
JFK-VCP 11:30 pm - 10:30 am + 1 day (or 11:59 pm-11:00 am + 1 day)

I only flew Azul once domestic and it was by far the best airline experience intra-Brazil ive ever had besides flying private lol.

Viracopos has an executive bus to shuttle u from Viracopos to Sao Paulo, its quite nice and not a hassle, given how long it can take you from SP to GRU during rush hour.

Lucky i am ITCHING to see your Azul review!!!!! 🙂

Agree with @Schaar, Azul arguably has the best product domestically in Brazil. If the product is similar to TAP internationally (which it definitely is, at least as far as the hard product is concerned), it is also a good choice there.

As regards VCP, this is definitely an advantage for those connecting, as compared to GRU. As others said, both GRU and VCP quite far from the city center, but both take about the same time and both are hard to plan (it can take anything from 45 min to 4 hours ... in both cases ...). This makes me wonder what the VCP international lounge is like, because you often arrive quite early (because of better than expected traffic).