Avianca Brasil

If you stood at a Brazilian airport between 2010 and 2019, you saw them everywhere: Airbus jets with the red “avianca” titles that were easy to mistake for aircraft from Colombia. But behind Avianca Brasil was a separate company with its own codes, its own history as an air taxi for the oil industry – and an abrupt end in May 2019. This page shows you where the airline came from, what it flew and how to reliably tell it apart from the Colombian Avianca in old photos.

Avianca Brasil at a glance

Avianca Brasil was a Brazilian airline that flew until 2019. Its legal name remained OceanAir Linhas Aéreas to the end – the name under which the company had started in 1998 as a small air taxi operation. From 2010 it operated under the Avianca brand and grew into Brazil’s fourth-largest airline, behind LATAM Airlines Brasil, GOL and Azul. According to the aviation authority ANAC, its share of domestic traffic in 2018 was about 13 percent.

The special thing: Avianca Brasil was not a subsidiary of the Colombian Avianca, but belonged to the business circle of the entrepreneur Germán Efromovich. His Synergy Group had also taken over Avianca in Colombia in 2004. This created an airline that looked like Avianca and offered flights in Avianca style – but had its own codes, its own aircraft and its own balance sheet.

From July 2015 to September 2019, Avianca Brasil was part of Star Alliance as an affiliate. In December 2018 the airline filed for judicial reorganization, and on May 24, 2019 ANAC suspended flight operations. In July 2020 a court declared the bankruptcy.

From OceanAir to Avianca Brasil

The story doesn’t begin in a capital-city terminal, but on the coast north of Rio de Janeiro. OceanAir started in 1998 as an air taxi company and flew oil industry workers in the region around Macaé and Campos dos Goytacazes. Entry was eased by proximity to Marítima, an offshore company of the same owner, Germán Efromovich.

The step from air taxi to scheduled service was a big leap for OceanAir. At first the airline was a small regional company, known for colorful turboprops. Only with the name change and the Airbus fleet did it become a serious competitor to the country’s big three.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code O6: appeared in the flight number, on tickets and departure boards.
• ICAO code ONE: used by air traffic control in the flight plan.
• Callsign OCEANAIR: this is how the crews checked in on the radio – to the very end.

The callsign is a good clue for you in old radio recordings or flight data. While the aircraft wore “avianca” on the outside, the old company name was retained on the radio. The Colombian Avianca, by contrast, flies with IATA AV and ICAO AVA. If you only note “Avianca” in a list, you lose exactly the information that tells the two airlines apart. You’ll find more on such quirks in the article on airline callsigns and their history.

One brand, two airlines

For passengers the boundary was barely visible; for spotters it is the core of this page. Avianca Brasil used the name and design of Avianca, but was an independent Brazilian company. There is also a legal background: only Brazilian airlines may offer domestic flights in Brazil. A Colombian Avianca could not have served this market itself.

Feature	Avianca Brasil	Avianca (Colombia)
Legal name	OceanAir Linhas Aéreas	Aerovías del Continente Americano
IATA / ICAO	O6 / ONE	AV / AVA
Callsign	OCEANAIR	AVIANCA
Registration	PR- (Brazil)	mainly HK- (Colombia) and N-
Alliance status	Star Alliance affiliate 2015–2019	Star Alliance member
Today	shut down	active

The link between the two airlines ran through the owners. After the 2004 takeover of the Colombian Avianca, it later merged with the Central American TACA to form the Avianca group. Avianca Brasil, by contrast, stayed outside this group and continued to belong to the Efromovich family’s circle. From 2016, José Efromovich, Germán’s younger brother, was chairman of the board.

Star Alliance: the partner after TAM

Brazil was long an important market for Star Alliance. Varig was a member until early 2007, followed from 2010 to 2014 by TAM, which merged with LAN to form the LATAM group and left the alliance. Avianca Brasil filled this gap: on July 22, 2015 it was admitted as an affiliate, that is, as a partner under the umbrella of Avianca’s membership.

For travelers this meant connecting itineraries with airlines like Lufthansa, United or TAP via the Brazilian airports. The “Amigo” frequent flyer program was absorbed into Avianca’s LifeMiles program in the process. How the three big alliances are structured is explained in the overview of Star Alliance, oneworld and SkyTeam.

With the crisis the partnership ended too. In August 2019, Star Alliance announced Avianca Brasil’s exit effective September 1, 2019. By then the airline had already not been flying for months.

The Avianca Brasil fleet

Over the good twenty years, the fleet changed completely several times. For spotters that is a stroke of luck: if you have OceanAir and Avianca Brasil in your archive, you’ll find turboprops, Fokker jets, a few Boeing exotics and, in the end, an Airbus fleet with some rarities.

Type	Period (approx.)	Use	Spotter note
Embraer EMB 120 Brasília	2002–2008	Regional services	First scheduled type, colorful OceanAir livery
Fokker 50	2003–2008	Regional services	Small number, livery in red, beige and pink
Fokker 100	2005–2015	Domestic routes	Backbone of the OceanAir era, marketed internally as “MK-28”
Boeing 757-200 and 767-300ER	2007–2008	Short long-haul chapter	Only a few aircraft, rare archive subjects today
Airbus A318	2011–2019	Domestic routes	Shortest Airbus of the family, rare worldwide
Airbus A319	2010–2019	Domestic routes	Small number
Airbus A320	2011–2019	Domestic and regional routes	Most common type of the late years
Airbus A320neo	2016–2019	Domestic and regional routes	Large engines, later partly with Azul
Airbus A330-200	2014–2019	Long-haul	Widebody jet for the international routes

The periods are approximations from fleet overviews, not official statements by the airline. Briefly, Boeing 737-300s were also part of the fleet in the OceanAir era.

The A318 is the highlight for type collectors. The “baby bus” was built in only small numbers worldwide, and Avianca Brasil was among the operators with a larger fleet. To recognize it in a photo, look for the very short fuselage and the comparatively tall tail. How to reliably tell the family apart is shown in the guide Telling the A318, A319, A320 and A321 apart. For the late arrivals, the comparison A320neo or ceo? helps you.

A curiosity from the Fokker era: an Avianca Brasil Fokker 100 landed in Brasília in March 2014 after the nose gear could not be extended due to a hydraulic problem. Nobody was injured, but the aircraft was not repaired, was dismantled and in 2020 converted into a themed restaurant. The manufacturer of the Fokker jets was Fokker, and the late fleet came entirely from Airbus.

How to recognize Avianca Brasil

In the OceanAir era the airline was colorful: the Embraer Brasílias wore light blue, white, red, yellow, pink, orange and gray, the Fokker 50s red, beige and pink. With the rebrand in 2010, and at the latest with the joint identity from 2014, Avianca Brasil adopted the design of the Avianca group with the red “avianca” titles.

That makes identification tricky today. The only visible differences from the aircraft from Colombia were the Brazilian registration and a small Brazilian flag below the cockpit windows. If you only photographed the tail, you can hardly separate the two airlines in the picture.

Bases and routes

The focus was on domestic traffic between the big cities. The most important bases included São Paulo-Guarulhos and Brasília, plus the downtown São Paulo-Congonhas airport, Rio de Janeiro and Salvador. Congonhas in particular was important: the takeoff and landing rights at the airport close to the city are among the most valuable in Brazil. How the country’s biggest airport is laid out is covered in the entry on São Paulo-Guarulhos Airport.

Between 2017 and 2018, Avianca Brasil ventured into long-haul. New routes led to Miami and New York, and flights to Santiago de Chile were added; the A330-200s were available for long-haul. These routes were important for the Star Alliance partnership, but stayed in the program only briefly.

At the end of April 2019, in the middle of the crisis, the network shrank to just four airports: Congonhas, Rio de Janeiro-Santos Dumont, Brasília and Salvador.

The end: reorganization, slot auction and bankruptcy

The decline was fast. Avianca Brasil had grown strongly, but had high debts – above all to the lessors who owned the aircraft. Why airlines lease their fleets and what happens in the worst case is explained in the article on aircraft leasing.

For the Brazilian market the collapse was a turning point: four big airlines became three. The distribution of the Congonhas slots became the central question because it determines who can grow at São Paulo’s downtown airport. What is behind slots and why they are worth so much is shown in the article on airport slots.

Avianca Brasil in the spotter’s routine today

For your logbook, Avianca Brasil is an archive topic – but a rewarding one. If you photographed in Brazil between 2010 and 2019, your memory card may hold A318s and A320s in Avianca colors that you took for Colombian aircraft at the time. With the registration and the location, these pictures can be cleanly identified today.

The search for what became of them is exciting too. Because the fleet was leased, the aircraft went back to the lessors in 2019 and then moved to new operators – some of the A320neos ended up with Azul according to fleet overviews. Today the aircraft wear different registrations and designs. Sometimes after such a change you briefly see hybrids of the old and new identity; what to look for is shown in the guide to hybrid liveries.

If you’re interested in Brazil’s aviation history, you’ll find more historic airlines such as Transbrasil, VASP or Panair do Brasil – each with its own liveries and types for the archive.

Common mix-ups

• Taking Avianca Brasil for a subsidiary of the Colombian Avianca – legally it was a separate company in the Efromovich family’s circle.
• Mixing up O6 and AV – O6 and ONE belonged to Avianca Brasil, AV and AVA belong to the Avianca from Colombia.
• Expecting the callsign “AVIANCA” – on the radio, Avianca Brasil called itself “OCEANAIR” to the end.
• Attributing every Avianca aircraft in Brazil to the Brazilian company – aircraft from Colombia also flew to Brazil; the registration decides.
• Noting the A318 as an A319 – the shorter fuselage and the tall tail give away the baby bus.
• Equating Avianca Brasil with Avianca Cargo – the A330-200F went to the Avianca group’s cargo division.

Conclusion

Avianca Brasil is an airline with a double identity: Avianca on the outside, OceanAir on the inside. In a good twenty years, an air taxi for the oil industry became Brazil’s fourth-largest airline with a Star Alliance connection, long-haul routes and one of South America’s most interesting Airbus fleets – until debts caught up with the company within months in 2019. For spotters, the main task that remains is cleanly separating old Avianca photos.