Varig

If you stood at the fence in Frankfurt in the 1980s and 1990s, you knew the sight: a big long-haul aircraft with “VARIG” titles and a compass rose on the tail, arrived from Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo. For almost eighty years, Varig was quintessentially Brazil’s airline – with roots that reach surprisingly deep into Germany. Today no aircraft flies in its colors any more. This page shows you where Varig came from, which types it flew, how it went under and how to recognize it with confidence on old photos.

Varig at a glance

Varig was a Brazilian airline that flew from 1927 to 2006 and was regarded for decades as Brazil’s national flag carrier. The name is an abbreviation: Viação Aérea Rio-Grandense, named after the state of Rio Grande do Sul in the south of the country. There, in Porto Alegre, the airline was founded on May 7, 1927 – as the first airline founded in Brazil.

From the small flying boat operation, growth and acquisitions made it South America’s leading airline. The most important hub was for a long time Rio de Janeiro Galeão; from 1988, São Paulo Guarulhos gained in importance. From there Varig flew to Europe, North America, Africa and Asia. From October 1997, Varig was a member of Star Alliance.

A particular feature was the ownership structure. From the 1940s, a large part of the shares went to a foundation named after longtime chief Ruben Berta and serving the employees. In the end, the Fundação Ruben Berta held a majority of Varig. In June 2005 the airline had to petition for court-supervised restructuring, in 2006 it was split up, and in 2007 GOL bought the viable part.

German roots: Otto Ernst Meyer and the Condor Syndikat

The story of Varig begins with a German. Otto Ernst Meyer had served in the German air service in the First World War and emigrated to Brazil in 1921. In Porto Alegre he wanted to build an air link through the south of the country – and found partners for it in Germany.

The most important partner was the Condor Syndikat. The German company, founded in 1924, explored flight routes along the Brazilian coast; in 1926 Deutsche Luft Hansa took a stake in it. The Syndikat provided Varig with its first aircraft: a flying boat of the type Dornier Wal with room for ten passengers, christened “Atlântico” and registered as P-BAAA. In June 1927 Varig began scheduled service with it from Porto Alegre via Pelotas to Rio Grande. The Condor Syndikat also held a stake in the young airline. The flying boat’s manufacturer was Dornier.

A second Brazilian airline, by the way, emerged from the same circle: the Syndicato Condor, which was renamed Cruzeiro do Sul after Brazil entered the war in 1943. Of all companies, it was this one that Varig took over decades later – a circle closing.

The history in stages

Particularly formative was the takeover of the international routes of Panair do Brasil in 1965. Panair had until then been Brazil’s big long-haul airline, with connections to Europe. With these rights Varig became the country’s leading international airline. Domestic competitors remained all the same: VASP and Transbrasil also flew for decades and, like Varig, disappeared from the market in the 2000s.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code RG: appeared in the flight number, on tickets and on departure boards.
• ICAO code VRG: used by air traffic control in the flight plan.
• Callsign VARIG: this is how the crews checked in on the radio.

After the split-up it gets tricky. The “new” Varig kept flying as VRG Linhas Aéreas, while the “old” company with the debts was later run under another name. If you come across Varig in data from 2006 to 2009, it is worth looking closely at which company is meant. How callsigns come about in the first place is explained in the piece on airline callsigns and their history.

Varig in Star Alliance

Star Alliance started on May 14, 1997, with five airlines: Air Canada, Lufthansa, SAS, Thai Airways and United Airlines. On October 22, 1997, Varig joined as the sixth member – the first airline from Latin America. Because the accession took place in the founding year, Varig is often counted among the founding airlines. Strictly speaking, though, it was the first new member after the founding.

For the alliance, Varig was an important building block at the time: it brought South America into the network. For passengers from Germany, that meant being able to travel to Brazil on one ticket with Lufthansa and Varig and onward within the country. That tied the second link to Lufthansa’s history – seventy years after the Condor Syndikat. How the three big alliances are positioned today is explained in the overview of Star Alliance, oneworld and SkyTeam.

With the split-up and the sale to GOL, the membership ended on January 31, 2007. During the alliance period, some Varig aircraft carried the Star Alliance logo on the fuselage. Which alliance designs exist and how to recognize them is shown in the piece on alliance liveries.

Varig’s fleet

Hardly any airline has lived through as many aircraft generations as Varig. From the flying boat of the 1920s to the twin-engine long-haul jet, the fleet mirrors almost the entire history of commercial aviation.

Era	Types (selection)	Use	Spotter note
Beginnings	Dornier Wal, Junkers aircraft	Regional service in the south	Only on historic photos now
Propeller era	Douglas DC-3, Convair CV-240, Super Constellation	Domestic and first long-haul	Classics of the 1950s
Turboprop	Lockheed L-188 Electra	Rio–São Paulo shuttle	About 30 years in service, until 1992
First jets	Caravelle, Boeing 707, Boeing 727	Long-haul and domestic	The 707 brought Varig into the jet age
Widebody	DC-10, Boeing 747, Airbus A300	Long-haul	DC-10 in service from 1974
Late years	Boeing 767-300ER, MD-11, Boeing 777-200ER	Long-haul	777 from 2001 to 2006
Short and medium-haul	Boeing 737-300 and other 737 generations	Domestic and South America	Successor to the Electra on the shuttle from 1992

A favorite of Brazilian aviation fans was the Lockheed Electra. Varig used a good dozen Electras for around three decades on the “Ponte Aérea”, the air bridge between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. The turboprops flew more than half a million flights there until Varig replaced them in 1992 with Boeing 737-300s and Fokker 100s.

On long-haul, Varig showed over the years almost everything Boeing and McDonnell Douglas had to offer. The DC-10 flew for the airline from 1974, followed later by the Boeing 747, the Boeing 767 and finally the MD-11 and 777. When you sort old photos, the guides to the Boeing 707 and to the generations of the Boeing 737 will help you. The manufacturer of most of the later jets was Boeing, which McDonnell Douglas has also belonged to since 1997.

How to recognize Varig

The most important identifying mark is the Rosa dos Ventos, the compass rose. It was designed in 1954 and appeared as the symbol of the whole fleet on the tail from 1961, after the takeover of Real. Before that, from the early 1930s, the aircraft carried a logo with the legendary figure Icarus.

In 1996 Varig got a new look. The compass rose stayed but was redrawn in yellow and gold and placed in a blue circle. The “VARIG” titles became a darker blue, with the addition “Brasil”. The aircraft of the last years wore this design – including the MD-11 and 777 that you are most likely to find in photos from Frankfurt. How airlines change their appearance and why hybrid forms arise is explained in the piece on livery changes and rebranding. For many, the compass rose ranks among the legendary airline liveries.

A note on photos from the transition period: after the takeover by GOL, the Varig brand got a new look once more in 2007. Shots from those years are rarer and exciting for your archive – here check especially carefully which company operated the aircraft. You can read more about such transitions in the piece on hybrid and mixed liveries.

Varig in Germany

For German spotters, Varig was present mainly in Frankfurt. Frankfurt Airport was one of the airline’s most important European destinations. When Varig discontinued almost all international routes in the crisis in July 2006, only Frankfurt and Buenos Aires remained – making Frankfurt for a short time the only remaining destination in Europe.

If you photographed in Frankfurt back then, you have a good chance of MD-11s or 777s in Varig colors on your memory card. Many spotters stood at places like the Zeppelinheim viewing platform for that. How best to explore the airport today is shown in the plane spotting guide for Frankfurt.

The end: restructuring, split-up and GOL

Despite its size, Varig never got out of the red from the 1990s on. Debts grew, and competition at home got tougher. To raise money, Varig parted with subsidiaries: the maintenance division VEM went in November 2005 to a consortium led by TAP Air Portugal, and the cargo subsidiary VarigLog shortly afterward to the investor group Volo do Brasil.

Under GOL, the Varig brand kept flying for some time, at first internationally too, for example to Frankfurt. The IATA code RG and the callsign “VARIG” were officially abolished in October 2008, in 2009 independent flight operations ended, and from 2010 GOL no longer used the name. What remains is the Smiles frequent flyer program, which comes from Varig. The place as Brazil’s largest airline has now been taken by LATAM Airlines Brasil.

Varig in everyday spotting today

For your logbook, Varig is an archive topic – but a rewarding one. If you go through old slides, negatives or early digital photos, you may find a DC-10 from the 1980s or an MD-11 from the 2000s. Type, registration, place and date turn these pictures into clean entries. How to tell older types apart is shown in the piece Recognizing vintage aircraft.

The search for where they ended up is also exciting. Former Varig aircraft flew with other airlines after 2006, and some long-haul jets were converted to freighters. Via the registration and the serial number you can often trace their path.

Common mix-ups

• Calling Varig a Star Alliance founder – Varig joined in October 1997, five months after the alliance was founded.
• Confusing the Condor Syndikat with the leisure airline Condor – the 1920s Syndikat is a completely different company.
• Equating Varig and VASP – VASP was a separate competitor from São Paulo.
• Taking Panair do Brasil for a Varig predecessor – in 1965 Varig took over only the routes, not the company.
• Automatically assigning photos from 2006–2009 to the old Varig – from July 2006 the new VRG Linhas Aéreas flew.
• Taking the compass rose for a logo from the very beginning – before that, Varig wore an Icarus logo.

Conclusion

Varig is an airline with a surprisingly German backstory: founded by an emigrant, started with a Dornier flying boat from the Condor Syndikat and later a Star Alliance partner of Lufthansa. In between lie almost eight decades in which Varig flew along through nearly every era of commercial aviation, from the Electra to the 777. For spotters, looking back is worthwhile – at the compass rose on the tail, clean registrations and the aircraft that kept flying under other names after 2006.