TAM Shuttle: Sao Paulo to Rio de Janeiro

Both Sao Paulo and Rio have downtown airports which are extremely convenient for domestic flights.  Congonhas, in Sao Paulo, is in the middle of the city, surrounded on all sides by dense housing, offices and warehouses.  In contrast, Rio's Santos Dumont sits on the seafront, creating some of the most scenic approaches and take-offs imagineable - be sure to snag a window seat.

Curiously, in stark relief to the mayhem prevalent at Sao Paulo's main international Airport, both Congonhas and Santos Dumont give the impression of calm, if crowded, efficiency.  Similarly, in contrast to the dissapointment of their long-haul business class product, TAM's shuttle between the two cities includes a busy crew rushing to serve refreshments and snacks during the short flight.

Searching for flights between Congonhas and Santos Dumont on Kayak, Expedia or any of the other UK agents will return plenty of results, usually at a similar (high) price, but only on TAM, who offer a half-hourly frequency for most of the day.  GOL also offer a half-hourly service, while WebJet (soon to be swalloed by GOL) and Avianca offer less frequent servce.

Visiting the websites of TAM, GOL, WebJet or Avianca will yield any number of flights at fares far below those being offered by TAM through European agents.  These exisit only to tease you.  It seems that the websites of Brazilian airlines will only accept domestically issued credit and debit cards.  At first I assumed that my poor (well, non-existant) grasp of Portuguese was the problem - many of the "English" websites revert back to Portuguese at the payment screens, but a Portuguese colleague had similar issues.  Together, we spent hours trying to book cheaper tickets, first on GOL then on Avianca, trying a variety of credit and debit cards with absoltely no joy. 

I can almost understand that some payment systems only accept local cards, but why aren't GOL or Avianca offering fares through the global distribution systems, even at a slight premium to those booked dorectly on their websites?

Comments

[advogado separação italia]

truque único distintivo. Em adição Além disso, o conteúdo é obra-prima obra-prima. Você tem feito a excelente atividade no este tópico!