Review of LATAM flight from Sao Paulo to Rio De Janeiro in Premium Eco

introduction

Hey there! Welcome back to this flight series. After arriving in GRU from ASU the previous day, I continued my journey to Rio by flying on LATAM's Premium Economy to SDU. I was curious about how different the product was when compared to Economy in such a short domestic hop. This was the routing, as shown in the previous report:

Booking

As I explained on the previous report, I booked the flights throught the LA website. Despite initially having the intention of booking Economy, I went with Premium Economy because of the amount of baggage included and unusually affordable fares.

at the airport

After sleeping a couple of hours, I had breakfast at the hotel and took a cab to GRU's Terminal 2, where LA's domestic flights operate from. I arrived at 06:15, some 2 hours before the scheduled time of departure. Unlike in ASU, there were no sinks at the entrance.

As this whole section of T2 is exclusively used by LA, there were several check-in counters available. As I already had done online check-in and had my boarding pass on my phone, I only needed to dispatch my baggage.

Some views of Terminal 2.

As I went through security quite fast, I was airside 15 minutes after arriving in the airport.

View of the apron. It was nice to see it as busy as during pre-pandemic times. Note that the majority of LA planes pictured here already wore the new livery.

Making my way to Gate 235, from which my flight was scheduled to depart.

Departures hall. My flight's gate was changed to 233.

BOARDING

- Airline: LATAM (LA)
- Aircraft: Airbus A319
- Registration: PR-MYM
- Age: 10 years (2011)
- Scheduled time of departure: 08:20 (ATD 08:19)
- Scheduled time of arrival: 09:20 (ATA 09:00)
- Flight duration: 01:00 (Actual duration: 00:41)
- Take-off from runway: 09L
- Landing on runway: 02R

Boarding started around 07:30, and passengers were divided in 4 groups. As I travelled in W, I was on group 1. The plane taking us to SDU was an A319 registered PR-MYM, which made its first flight in 2011 and was delivered to TAM Airlines. At the front door, we were received by a single flight attendant. Turns out there were only two of them for the whole plane.

My seat, 3A. In this flight, the W and Y cabins were not separated by a partition. The cabin was not yet refurbished with the new signature LA seats and finishes.

View from my window. A Gol 737-800 was next to us.

As in the previous flight, there was no flight magazine, and the only thing in the front seat pocket was the safety card.

The pitch was 30 inches, the same as Y.

FLIGHT

Some 9 minutes before the scheduled time of departure, we started pushback. The FAs performed a manual safety demonstration.

Afterwards, we started taxiing towards runway 09L. A lot of G3 738s and one LA A321 could be seen.

Inmediatly after getting into position at runway 09L, the CFM56 engines roared and, seconds later, the plane rotated at 08:19, one minute ahead of schedule.

While beginning the climb to FL250, we flew over several residential areas of Greater Sao Paulo.

As we climbed higher, we broke through several clouds, producing periods of total whiteness.

Minutes later, a beautiful blue sky made its appearance.

At FL250. Because this is a such a brief flight, we mantained cruise altitude for only 5 minutes before already starting descent. 

View of the cabin from my seat mid-flight. As ordered by the Brazilian Ministry of Health in the context of the pandemic, there is currently no meal service aboard domestic flights in Brazil. For a short flight like this one, there isn't much of a difference, however, passengers in +3 hour domestic Brazilian flights (take routes like GRU-MAO as an example) might suffer as a result of such measures.

We started descending towards SDU just 15 minutes after leaving GRU.

After we broke through the clouds again, the coast and several islands could be seen.

The Cidade Maravilhosa began to appear along the horizon.

We made a tight turn to the left to align ourselves with SDU runway 02R.

As we neared the coast for final approach, we overflown several islands.

There are Copacabana and Ipanema!

Then, in what I consider to be of the best and most awesome sights I have ever witnessed from a plane, we passed literally meters away from the Sugarloaf!

Views of Botafogo and Flamengo neighborhoods just seconds from touchdown. My future apartment could be seen from here!

We touched down at runway 02R at 09:00, after 41 minutes of flight. As expected, brakes were used to the max.

Vacating the runway and taxiing to gate.

Apparently, this is the executive jet apron. Note the Phenoms and the Learjet.

More sights as we came close to the gate 2.

<b style="">Interesting fact: I flew this very same Gol 738, PR-GUT, on the same ASU-GRU-SDU route back in 2017, which was my very first report in this site: https://flight-report.com/en/report/21765/gol-g37481-asuncion-asu-sao-paulo-gru

We came to a full stop at 09:04.

DEPLANING & ARRIVAL

Those of us in W deplaned first. The arrival process was quite simple as baggage claim was just a couple of minutes away.

Sights of our A319.

SDU's beautiful crystal terminal.

Baggage claim.

Arrivals hall.

Check-in hall and terminal exterior.

From there, I took a remise to my temporary new apartment. I have four promising years ahead on this beautiful city. Until the next report!