São Paulo – Brazil and the United Arab Emirates have expanded the flight agreement that has been in place since 2004. During meetings promoted on Thursday and Friday last week, in Rio de Janeiro, representatives of the governments of both countries decided to authorise new passenger and cargo flights.
According to Sidney Alves Costa, head advisor at the Institutional Relations Secretariat at the Presidency of the Republic, who participated in the meetings, the negotiation forecasts 28 new weekly flights for passenger and cargo transport and another 21 for cargo alone.
The original treaty forecasted 14 flights a week between both countries, of which seven are currently used by Emirates airline, which runs a daily flight between Dubai, in the Emirates, and São Paulo.
The new authorisations should be implemented gradually. In the case of mixed flights, taking passengers and cargo, of the 28 frequencies approved, eight should be allowed now, another eight in April next year, six in October 2009 and the last six in April 2010.
For the flights exclusively for cargo transport, nine new frequencies will be allowed now, another nine in April next year and the last three in April 2010.
According to Costa, the novelty in this area is that the cargo flights may have a stopover in Europe or in some other South American country before coming to Brazil, as well as another three stops in South America before flying back to the Emirates.
The authorisation does not mean that airlines are going to create new flights immediately, or that all the frequencies must be used in future. For instance, the original flight agreement was signed in June 2004, but Emirates only started flying to Brazil in October last year. The negotiation, however, shows that the route is successful, both with regard to passenger and cargo transport.
Apart from Costa, who has been accompanying negotiations with the Arabs since the beginning, when he was the head of cabinet at the Ministry of Tourism, the meeting also included the National Civil Aviation Agency (Anac), which is responsible for authorisation of this kind of agreement in Brazil; the Ministry of Finance was also present, as were representatives from the civil aviation departments of the United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi and Dubai, the embassy of the Emirates to Brasília. Etihad Airways, from Abu Dhabi, and Emirates, from Dubai, also had personnel at the meeting.
*Translated by Mark Ament
