I had no idea Brazilians could fly for Avianca. When did these domestic flights start?
Avianca it's owned by a company from Rio de Janerio now, Synergy group.
The owner of Ocean Air together with Synergy Group (this company is also huge in the US) bought Avianca and VIP of Ecuador, they all fly under the Avianca name now, because Avianca can fly Intl.
The CEO of Synergy, has Bolivian, Brazilian and Colombian citizenship.
Ocean Air and Synergy group own a number of other small airlines and corporate dept, all over south America and Africa. When Varig went out of biz they bought VarigLog (varig cargo). Synergy is also really big in the oil and gas industry (the first flights of Ocean Air where from Rio and SP to Macae, the biggest oil pole of South America..guess why?) and work with NASA in the US.
They started as taxi out of SDU, they just had a plane ending up in the bay few weeks ago, and many other in the past (other pilots joke about their name "Ocean Air", well they are based out of an airport that has a small runway with water on both sides..).
They main hub is GRU now.
This is huge deal, there is a lot of money involved, Ocean Air was operating all the F50 and F100 that TAM had, and with Avianca they are the world biggest Fokker operator left. All this planes are being replaced and Embraer will be in this deal.....
Brazilian companies are buying half of South America, every 10 dollars made in South America 9 go to Brazil, the economy here is going crazy.