Sky High Savings: A Comprehensive Review of Flying Budget with GOL in Brazil
On holiday between Argentina and Brazil, we were going to be flying with a mix of airlines (British Airways, Aerolineas Argentina, Latam and GOL) and a mix of classes (economy, premium/business and business class). Having organised the holiday such that we started in Argentina and then travelled north to Rio in Brazil for the Champions’ Parade (winners finale of the samba schools Carnival parade), we were looking to fly from Iguazu Falls (on the Brazilian side) to Rio. I’d wanted to try to get to Rio as early as possible in the day, without necessarily getting up at silly o’clock to get a flight.
Using trusty Skyscanner (which I use all the time to find out what flights/routings/timings are best), I found that GOL had a flight leaving the Brazilian airport of Iguazu (IGU) at 10:05, due to arrive into Rio de Janeiro’s Antonio Carlos Jobim International Airport (popularly known by its original name Galeão International Airport - GIG). Staying at the Belmond Hotel das Cataratas in the Iguassu Falls National Park, it only took about 25 minutes to get to the airport from the hotel. We therefore had a reasonable start to the day getting up just before 7am, getting sorted and down for breakfast (and one last awe inspiring look of the falls from the incredibly positioned hotel) before being transported to the airport by Belmond’s tour company. Although the distance is not far (less than 9 miles), because vehicles are restricted on speed within the national park (by GPS tracking devices no less) the distance to the airport took slightly longer than you might have expected.
We arrived at the airport just after 8:40am, the Brazilian airport (Foz do Iguaçu) seems smaller than the Argentine equivalent, and first stop was to go through a scanning facility before we were able to check in. On the other side, there were several desks for GOL, none particularly busy but (having opted for their ‘Max’ ticket) we were able to use their preferential check in. The check in operative was very efficient and we were checked in within seconds. The predominance of orange (not sure if this is inspired by the UK’s Easyjet, or vice versa [who was first?] or that orange has been decided as being the right international colour for a budget airline) was obvious, from uniforms to logos and the website.
When booking these tickets, it had been very easy using the GOL website which was appropriately translated into English when needed. I was able to check in online in advance of the flight (although here I wasn’t able on my iPhone to get a translation) but basically an online check-in is an online check-in, pretty much regardless of airline, country or language. I knew from the booking process that there were four fare classes (Promo, Light, Plus and Max) and I knew I had opted for the best available, remembering that this gave priority check-in and boarding, hold luggage, cabin storage and seating. Having had problems with our luggage on Aerolineas Argentinas and Latam (which, though a member of OneWorld seems to have different rules to British Airways) on domestic flights within Argentina, I tried to find out in advance what the rules were for GOL. Initially I searched Google but found that I kept getting routed to the GOL mobile page, which despite having conversion to the USA and English, once you started selecting different options from the homepage, some of the sub-pages were not translated. I tried all sorts but regardless of what I tried, searched on or looked at on Google, everything just came back to the GOL mobile page, and for the life of me I could not find any reference to luggage allowances.
I therefore found out that there was a direct message contact for GOL through Twitter, I contacted them with our booking reference (on Monday for a Saturday flight) and the following morning (Tuesday) received an automated response back that they would reply soon, or gave a link to contact Customer Service online - following the link just basically took me back to the mobile website where I had already checked. I sent a reminder message on Friday as still hadn’t had a response within 4 days, that time there was no automated response nor indeed did we get a reply before our flight (or since). Basically this is probably the only negative of the entire GOL experience (other than the rather annoying constant diversion to the limited GOL mobile website. Not sure whether this is something that they could control (I think it probably is) as opposed to an iPhone automatically routing you to a mobile website (where there is one) rather than the full desktop experience. Almost giving up and about to go down to the hotel front desk to ask for help, I had a flash on inspiration and thought I would try the same thing on my iPad - I searched again in Google for GOL luggage allowance and hey presto this screen came up, exactly what I had been looking fo
Thankfully we were already allowed two pieces each, of no more than 23kg each bag. Although British Airways accepted our cases of 27kg on the international flight to Buenos Aires, this was where we became unstuck with Aerolineas Argentinas as (although we were allowed more weight) the maximum weight per piece with them was 23kg. Thanks to some selective removal of heavier items and the creative use of plastic wrap (thanks to the very helpful man at Buenos Aires’ Aeroparque airport) we were able to create a second bag each, even with a perfectly formed handle from plastic wrap! Having learnt our lesson and bought another bag to create a more permanent third piece of luggage before our GOL flight, presenting three bags between us at the GOL check-in was no issue, they were weighed and tagged quickly, we were given new printed check-in slips (though we did already have these stored on our phones in Passbook - the mobile app/website did work for that part).
We then went through security (a bit muddled as this really just backs onto the check-in desks for many of the other airlines at the airport) and some confusion as to queues as there seemed to be a separate queue forming for an Azul flight which we assumed was departing earlier. Despite all the (usual) signs about removing laptops from cases and liquids being no more than 100ml each to a maximum of 1 litre, we saw people taking through 1 and 2 litre bottles of Coke and water, and one man even had two ‘press to pour’ thermos flasks with handles, clearly supplied with a lot of coffee or something for the flight. Also reminded us that at Mendoza’s airport in Argentina (where we were cautious about our 100ml liquid containers of sunscreen) there were people taking through 6-bottle boxes of wine - maybe just because Mendoza is in the heart of the Argentinian wine region that there are special exemptions?!
After going through security with no issues (despite our raised eyebrows about the contradiction of signage and what people were taking through, and a bit of a ‘jobsworth’ security attendant about where you exactly stood while waiting to be the next person through), there were then two boarding areas for gates 1-3 and another for 4-5. We were departing from gate 4, the printed slip (and updates of my beloved TripIt app) showed, and that we would be boarding at 9:25am, 30 minutes before the flight was due to depart. We took seats for a little while, but around 9:20am we could see there was activity at the gate so went to take a look. There seemed to be three queues, one on the left was normal boarding, one in the middle was priority and the final on the right was for GOL Premium, rows 1 through 5. As I think is maybe a Portuguese custom (I’m sure I saw this on a travel programme once featuring Portugal) priority is always given to pregnant women or those with young children, so (at exactly 9:25am) after some explanatory announcements in Portuguese and English over the tannoy, followed by another explanation in front of each queue with hand signals, we started to board. It was all very organized, other than a random middle-aged couple traveling alone who seemed to be in the priority kids lane (whose slips were scanned but then told to wait to the side by the boarding agent, which they did for all of 30 seconds before ignoring her and walking off to the plane anyway). Next was the priority row 1-5 queue and we boarded a very new looking aircraft (a Boeing 737-800) - our seats were row 1, seats B and C, though actually no one sat in 1A, so we had all three seats to ourselves; there were indeed priority access overhead bins and loads of legroom (though the seats on the other side - 1D/E/F actually had even more).
The aircraft was clearly new, spotlessly clean and seats (though narrow) were comfortable and having the spare middle seat meant we had two armrests each and lots of room. Boarding was quick and efficient, pushing back from the gate well ahead of scheduled as was commented on by the pilot during his take off announcement. Flight attendants were extremely friendly, spoke good English, and during the flight we were offered complimentary soft drinks and snacks (salt or sweet). The 1,181km flight was due to take 1h 55m, expected to land into Rio at noon exactly. Despite being overcast with some rain leaving Iguassu, once airborne the sky cleared to be the most beautiful blue sky with only intermittent cloud, and now having bagged the window seat I was afforded the most spectacularly view (traveling north east) of the stunning Brazilian eastern coastline.
Although there was WiFi advertised (GoGo inflight), I did try to connect but despite doing what I thought was correct to get registered and moving onto the payment screen (in Portuguese), for whatever reason it wouldn’t go forward a step to allow me to select a package. There were four options, from R$10.00 (about £2) to R$35 (about £7) for the max whole flight package (judging by the Portuguese description). The cost didn’t seem to bad, so tried to opt for the max package but to no avail - it wasn’t a big issue (though maybe the second negative of the GOL experience) and probably just something really simple, had I known. I decided instead to start drafting my blog post instead and just enjoy the absolutely incredible view of the coastline, the crystal clear blue water and getting organised with the camera for what I was hoping would be the first sighting of Rio on the approach.
The pilot announced at 11:34am that the flight would be landing in 20 minutes (we assumed from the Portuguese announcement, this time not translated into English), we touched down at 11:48am and were at the gate at 11:55am, 5 minutes before the scheduled arrival at noon. Being at the front of the aircraft we were first off and by the time we got to the luggage carousel we only had a few minutes to wait for our baggage. Although many airlines do seem to advertise the benefit of priority baggage reclaim, I’ve found from experience that this hardly ever seems to materialise in reality. However, with GOL it was a very nice surprise to see that this did actually work and our (now) 3 bags came off in the first batch.
Overall the GOL experience was a very pleasant one - helpful staff, good aircraft, exemplary timing and standards, only minor issues were the lack of contact through Twitter (despite being acknowledged and chased), getting to the source of information on their mobile app and the inability to connect to GOL online during the flight. Would happily choose this option again for flights within Brazil, from now on though on for the rest of this vacation, all other domestic flights are booked with Latam, and the international return to the UK with British Airways. I didn’t write a review of the BA flight to Buenos Aires (was an older aircraft so nothing exceptional) but we’re due to fly Club World on their Dreamliner on the return from Rio so will write one up for the blog then.
