Varig: Latin America’s largest airline

Rio de Janeiro._ Varig is Latin America’s largest airline and it counts today on a fleet of 93 aircraft averaging 435 flights a day and carrying over 11 million passengers to 18 different countries every year.

The company, founded on May 7, 1927 in Porto Alegre, is an enterprise from the Ruben Berta Foundation. In conjunction with Rio Sul & Nordeste –a group holding a 43% grip of the market- Varig operates Brazil’s largest and most complete line network covering 112 cities.

Its international mesh provides service for four continents. In South America, it flies to the mainland’s major cities. A case in point is Buenos Aires with as many as 72 flights a week.

On the other hand, it has maintained these communications with the Argentine capital and the cities of Cordoba, Rosario and Mendoza for the last 48 years

In the late 2001, the enterprise made major moves by purchasing high-tech jetliners aimed at streamlining its fleet. From those acquisitions, Varig has already received two Boeing 737-800s (for domestic flights inside Brazil and in countries from the MERCOSUR) plus a couple of Boeing 777s, currently flying the Rio de Janeiro-Sao Paulo-London route.