LATAM Airlines Brasil will bring back its non-stop service between Porto Alegre’s Salgado Filho Airport (POA) and Rio de Janeiro’s centrally-located Santos Dumont Airport (SDU) on 25 October 2026. The airline will operate two daily rotations—an early-morning SDU-POA leg that enables same-day meetings in the southern capital and a late-evening POA-SDU return that gets business travellers home before midnight. Flying time is just under two hours, shaving roughly 40 minutes off routings that require a connection through Rio-Galeão or São Paulo. The route was suspended in 2024 after federal authorities capped annual passenger movements at SDU to reinforce traffic at under-utilised Galeão. Those limits have since been recalibrated, opening the door for carriers to reinstate point-to-point links considered essential for corporate travellers and high-yield leisure traffic. Porto Alegre had been one of the most vocal cities lobbying for reinstatement because the local market lost a downtown Rio connection at the very moment it was preparing for a post-pandemic rebound in trade fairs and technology events. For companies based in Rio’s Centro and South Zone districts the return of POA flights to SDU is particularly significant. Galeão sits 20 kilometres from the CBD on an island that can be log-jammed at peak hours, whereas Santos Dumont is a five-minute taxi ride from Avenida Rio Branco. Multinationals with dual offices in Rio and Porto Alegre—especially in the energy, agri-business and fintech sectors—stand to save both time and hotel costs by scheduling day-return trips once the service resumes. The move also reflects LATAM’s broader strategy to deepen its domestic network following Chapter 11 restructuring in the United States and an equity injection from Delta Air Lines. The carrier is gradually re-balancing capacity towards business-heavy trunk routes while keeping leisure-focused frequencies to Galeão. Frequent-flyer members will earn and redeem LATAM Pass points on the revived service, and the airline aims to maintain competitive fares against Gol and Azul, both of which still channel Porto Alegre traffic through Galeão. Travel-management companies (TMCs) should update corporate booking tools to reflect the new airport code pairing and advise travellers that SDU’s curfew (06:00–23:00) remains in force; missed evening departures could require an overnight stay. With October schedules now filed in global distribution systems, organisations can begin locking in advance-purchase fares for Q4 project travel.
Source: The Road Atlas
