On Friday, US Airways admitted to the Department of Transportation that will not be able to begin flights from Charlotte to Sao Paulo, Brazil (GRU) this fall as it had hoped. While it has leased slots from United that can be used to GRU, that by itself does not guarantee that GRU has the capacity to handle the flight. And as the airline explained, it GRU won’t be able to accommodate the flight until IATA Winter 2012, which begins in late 2012:
US Airways has made substantial efforts to obtain the necessary Brazilian government approvals to commence service to Sao Paulo. However, a Iack of aircraft parking spaces, combined with GRU airport construction planned for late-2011/early-2012 has made it impossible for US Airways to commence Sao Paulo service before [IATA] Winter 2012. To resolve these infrastructure issues, US Airways has worked with the GRU airport administration to achieve a solution that enables US Airways to commence Charlotte-Sao Paulo service in Winter 2012.
