American Airlines announces partnership with Brazil’s GOL Airlines, beefs up Miami flights
American Airlines is teaming up with Brazil’s largest airline, GOL Airlines, in a new agreement allowing American to market GOL flights to its passengers and vice versa.
The codeshare partnership will allow American to connect its passengers on GOL flights to places outside the reach of its direct flights from Miami to Brasilia, Sao Paulo, Manaus and Rio de Janeiro. To prepare for the deal, American is adding 12 more daily flights from Miami International Airport to six cities across the U.S. this summer and a second daily flight from MIA to Rio de Janeiro next winter.
The deal must first be approved by government authorities in the U.S. and Brazil.
American Airlines is the largest carrier at MIA. Last year, a similar codesharing partnership between American and LATAM, Latin America’s largest airline, was nixed by a Chilean court. LATAM went on to forge a partnership with Delta Airlines, which purchased a 20% stake in the Chilean-based carrier for $1.9 billion in January. Delta has since ramped up its presence at MIA, adding 13 new nonstop daily flights to four cities from MIA this spring.
American Airlines’ Senior Vice President of strategy Vasu Raja doesn’t anticipate the American Airlines-GOL deal will face the same push back as the LATAM deal did.
“We don’t operate a connecting network in Brazil,” Raja said. “By contrast GOL doesn’t have a long haul network. We anticipate no regulatory challenges because we have no competitive overlap.”
To drive more traffic to Miami, American is adding one additional daily flight each to Nashville, Tenn.; Boston, Mass. and Houston, Texas; five to Orlando; two to Raleigh-Durham, N.C. and two to Tampa. The flights begin June 4.
The second daily MIA-Rio de Janeiro flight will be in place from Jan. 7 through March 28, 2021, the company said.
Raja, the American Airlines strategy executive, said the GOL partnership is based on input from customers.
“Customers have asked us to have more short haul connections in Brazil. This is a response to customer demand,” he said.
Raja said he was not allowed to talk about how the deal might affect GOL’s existing direct flight from Miami to Brasilia.
Both American Airlines and GOL have been hit hard by the grounding of the Boeing 737 Max planes. The U.S. government grounded the 737 MAX in March after two crashes killed 346 people in a span of six months. Boeing halted production of the troubled plane in January.
GOL’s fleet is made up entirely of Boeing 737s, eight of them Max planes, and the company has 130 Max planes on order, according to Reuters.
American Airlines has 24 Boeing 737 Max planes, all of which were based in Miami before the grounding. Now they are parked at maintenance facilities in Tulsa, Okla. and Roswell, N.M. The company has another 76 Boeing 737 Max planes on order.
GOL told Reuters the company hopes to be flying Max planes again by April. American currently estimates it will resume Max service in June.
