Philippines, Brazil agree on new flights

Paolo G. Montecillo – Philippine Daily Inquirer, 05/22/2013

Daily flights between the Philippines and Brazil, South America’s largest country, may start soon following the approval of new air rights between the two countries this week.

The  on Wednesday announced that the Philippine and Brazilian governments had signed an air agreement.

Under the accord signed by the Philippine air panel this week, a total of seven flights a week are now allowed between Manila and any point in Brazil. The agreement also includes an unlimited number of flights between any point outside of Manila to any point in Brazil.

Read more…

Brazil to carry out study of possible aid for airlines

Paulo Winterstein – Fox Business/Dow Jones Newswires, 04/09/2013

Brazil’s Secretary of Civil Aviation asked the country’s national development bank BNDES and civil aviation agency Anac to carry out an extensive study of the financial health of Brazil’s airlines to determine what aid, if any, the government can provide, the secretary said Tuesday.

Brazil’s airlines have seen costs rise in recent years as the price of jet fuel climbs and the government raises taxes on air travel. The government agreed last year to suspend another planned increase in taxes which would have almost doubled taxes that airlines pay to use airports, after an increase of 150% in taxes the previous year.

Brazil wants to ensure that it has healthy airlines to make use of the airports it is handing over to private operators. The government has already signed over four airports to private hands, and plans to auction operating licenses for two more airports this year. The government has also promised billions of dollars in help to build and expand regional airports to bolster air travel between mid-sized cities.

Read more…

Brazil’s Gol begins daily Miami flights as part of route shakeup

Dow Jones Newswires/Fox Business, 12/18/2012

Brazilian low-cost airline Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes (GOLL4.BR, GOL) said Tuesday that it began daily flights to Miami over the weekend, part of the company’s reorganization of its flight network.

Gol started operating daily flights from Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro to the North American city on Saturday, the company’s press office said. The flights make a stop in the Dominican Republic capital of Santo Domingo, a flight path that allows Gol to continue operating its fleet of Boeing 737-800s, which don’t have a long enough range for a direct flight to Miami.

Gol reported losses of more than one billion Brazilian reais ($480 million) in the first nine months of this year as costs rose and aggressive expansion in previous years led to flights with many empty seats. The company has said it will reduce seats on domestic flights by 5% to 8% in the first half of next year in an effort to boost profitability.

Read more…

Brazil upholds U.S. pilot’s convictions in 2006 air disaster

Reuters, 10/16/2012

A Brazilian federal court on Monday upheld the conviction of two U.S. pilots for their role in Brazil’s second-worst airline disaster, a 2006 midair collision over the Amazon in which 154 people died.

But it changed a lower court decision that had reduced each pilot’s four-year, four-month prison sentence to community service in the United States.

The federal court said the pilots must instead serve three years and one month in the United States under an “open” system allowed by Brazil law. They do not have to go to prison but have to report regularly to authorities and stay home at night.

Read more…

Brazil approves LAN’s tender offer for TAM to create LATAM

Eduardo Thomson – Bloomberg, 05/07/2012

Brazil’s securities regulator paved the way to the completion of a deal that will create the world’s largest airline by market value.

CVM, as the regulator is known, approved Lan Airlines SA (LAN)’s plan to start a tender offer for shares of carrier Tam SA (TAMM4), according to a regulatory filing yesterday.

Santiago-based Lan has 10 days to make the offer for Tam shares, the airline said in a statement posted on the website of Chile’s securities regulator.

Read more…

Brazil’s Gol agrees to buy Webjet to gain market share

Adriana Brasileiro – Bloomberg, 07/11/2011

Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes SA (GOLL4), Brazil’s second-largest airline by market share, agreed to acquire Webjet Linhas Aereas SA for 96 million reais ($61 million), as it seeks to recover market share in Latin America’s biggest economy.

Sao Paulo-based Gol said in a regulatory filing today that the deal valued closely-held Webjet at 310.7 million reais, according to a regulatory filing. Webjet, a low-cost carrier based in Rio de Janeiro and controlled by Guilherme Paulus, is Brazil’s fourth-largest airline, with 5.2 percent of the country’s airline market.

The deal gives Gol access to Webjet’s slots at Brazil’s main hubs and eliminates a low-cost competitor that catered to leisure passengers. Expansion may also help offset a squeeze in margins from higher fuel prices, said Felipe Rocha, an aviation analyst at Banco Fator SA in Sao Paulo.

Read more…

Get ready for takeoff: Brazil to loosen foreign ownership rules for airlines

Luciana Magalhaes – Dow Jones Investment Banker/Wall Street Journal, 12/13/2010

Bloomberg News

With Brazil preparing to lift the foreign ownership cap on its air carriers from 20% to 49%, expect more mergers and capital-raising in the next two to three years — and opportunities for foreign airlines to penetrate Latin America’s largest market.

With Brazil’s buoyant economy and its role as host to the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, the country’s airlines are cleared for take-off.

As of October, Brazil had 16 operating airlines. Two — TAM S.A. and Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes S.A. — are dominant, but there are at least four more substantial smaller carriers that could need capital or larger partners, or may want to go public.

The industry fundamentals are excellent. In the first half of the year, domestic traffic grew 28%, well above the 8% global growth rate, according Sao Paulo’s brokerage Coinvalores. For the full year, the domestic Brazilian flights are likely to end up 20%, more than twice the robust 7.5% projected GDP expansion.

Read more…