Brazil transit visas explained

A RECENT post on Travelinfo’s
new travel agent collaboration
platform, Open Jaw, read: “I
have a client planning a trip to South
America. I read somewhere a while
ago that travelling from Brazil to
Argentina (or vice-versa) requires some
kind of visa?”
In 2015, SAA announced that
passengers who were travelling
to South America via Brazil only
needed to obtain a transit visa if they
were travelling on separate tickets.
According to the Embassy of Brazil in
Pretoria, this is still the case today.
In short, passengers who can’t
produce their full itinerary from point
of departure to final stop upfront will
need a transit visa when travelling via
Brazil.
Take the example of a passenger
flying from Johannesburg to Buenos
Aires through Brazil. If the passenger
receives both boarding passes when
departing from Johannesburg, she
won’t need to leave the transit area
of the airport in Brazil and therefore
won’t need to produce a transit visa.
But if the passenger doesn’t have
her complete itinerary, she has to go
through immigration and customs to
check in for her next flight, where she
will be asked to produce a transit visa.
The Embassy of Brazil in Pretoria
says separate tickets are usually only
issued when a passenger is flying
on different airlines that don’t have
codeshare agreements. Before an
agent books a client on two different
airlines to travel through Brazil, the
Embassy advises agents to double
check whether the airlines have
codeshare agreements to avoid the
need for a transit visa.