Other North & South America Frequent Flyer Programs - GIG-SSA on TAM or Gol: When to Buy?

Hey folks,

I know that generally it's hard to say when it's a good time to buy tickets, since a lot of factors are involved in how airlines price the seats. However, I've never flown on either TAM or Gol, and who knows, perhaps they are more easily predictable, so I figured I'd ask.

I'm planning to fly roundtrip GIG-SSA (Rio-Salvador) on December 20 returning on January 2. Right now tickets are about $350-$400 R/T. Is this a reasonable price, is it often lower, might it go down?

Thanks!

The fare is normal for GIG-SSA with TAM and GOL, however, as you said promotions could come in and they are fairly unpredictable. However, the period you would like to buy your ticket is high season and fare will certainly only increase (especially because GIG and SSA are high demand destination for this period).

As for compariting GOL and TAM, as you may know GOL is a low cost airline while TAM is full service but in domestic routes the difference is not huge. For this 2h flight route, you may expect to get free snack and drinks with GOL and hot sandwich and drinks with TAM. TAM operates in the nicer and newer GIGT2 while GOL in the old GIGT1.

Other airlines operating this route are:

Webjet runs 3 x day GIG-SSA with attractive fares. You will get free cold sandwich and drinks. http://www.webjet.com.br

Azul runs 4 x daily SDU-SSA http://viajemais.voeazul.com.br. The service is great (comparable to TAM) with the advantage that you depart from Rio's downtown airport instead of GIG.

Rgs,

Thanks for your help!

Azul turned out to be cheaper than TAM, but they don't fly dailies from GIG (and the other airport is not direct to SSA), so I went with TAM at $394/person (ouch!).

Azul does operate SDU-SSA nonstop daily: AD4006/AD4007 are the flight numbers for the route.

Rgs,

For a domestic flight I don't think there is much, if any, difference between GOL and TAM. I would pick the better price/flight time. As noted, the dates you want to travel really are high season. If you must fly on those dates I would likely bite the bullet now and purchase. GOL has periodically run good sale fares but, those seem less common nowadays and I wonder if those would be offered during Xmas week.

Thanks for all the help. I bought TAM because they had the best price on the times I wanted and because I needed to fly out of and into GIG for connecting flights.

Thanks so much!