Flying within Brazil

Flying in Brazil is like flying in North America- you buy a ticket, hop on the plane and head towards your destination. I must say that I realize how blessed I was to be flying in Argentina 2 years ago for so cheap! Now that I’m looking at internal flight prices in Brazil, I’m noticing that it’s double or triple the flight cost than I was paying in Argentina.  This being said, I decided to fly standby instead of booking my plane ticket in advance. Let’s just make it part of the adventure!

Note that booking a flight within the country you are traveling in is almost ALWAYS less expensive than buying it from the US/Canada/Europe. Although you are taking a risk of not finding a seat on the plane, you normally always manage to get to your destination anyway. From experience, I noticed how South American airline companies normally have a different price for tourists, depending on where they are buying the ticket from. So what I’ve done in the past is buy my roundtrip flight from Montreal to my destination and I book all internal flights once I arrive at the airport. It’s worked so far so I decided to take the gamble in Brazil. Worse case scenario is that flight from Manaus-Rio will be full and I may have to fly from Manaus-Brasilia (for example) and then bus it to Rio. I may lose a day due to extra traveling but hey, it’s the risk I’m willing to take to save a few hundred $$. Right now, a flight from Manaus-Rio is almost CDN $500 so let’s just say that I’m willing to gamble it! But, considering that there are 4 main Brazilian airline companies I’m pretty sure one of the flights will have 1 seat for me!