Uruguay Air Connectivity Changes to Europe

Posted on 2012-11-29 by Mark Mercer
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Lots of changes in the Uruguay air travel picture in the past few months, including an upcoming one just announced a couple of weeks ago. Uruguay is losing 2 of its weekly 6 nonstop flights to/from Europe. Iberia is the only direct air connectivity from Uruguay to anywhere outside the Western Hemisphere, and due to their many recent problems, they are canceling two flights per week each way.

Image of Iberia aircraft at the gates.

Don’t worry they were flying an A340, not one of these narrowbody short-range MD80s.

I’ve mainly been focusing on my Uruguay Expat Life blog and expat info service lately, so I will link in my post at that site from earlier today. In it I list a lot of alternative routes and carrier combos for getting to and from Europe without transiting the USA. No matter  what ones opinion, reasoning, citizenship, or anything else vis-a-vis the USA, transiting the US just to connect on to another country is always a headache. Or worse. Even for us US citizens.

It’s coming on winter in the US, and as a former Ski Instructor at Breckenridge, as a former Manhattanite and Bostonian, and as somebody who has lived both in the US South (North Carolina) and the Pacific Northwest (Seattle area) in recent years, I highly encourage you to visit my home country. We have great sites, activities, friendly people, and our economy could use your tourist dollars. But only if you are planning to visit the USA.

If instead your plan is only to visit my new country of Uruguay, which I also highly encourage, please consider one of the alternative routings in my Uruguay Expat Life blog post.

You’ll thank me later. When you don’t have to do the ESTA online form or get a US transit visa at high cost, and no matter what your citizenship, when you don’t have to fully enter the USA through Immigrations and Customs, go landside in most cases but always have to re-clear security through our lovely and friendly, positively irradiating with scanners full of cheer, personal-touch TSA.

About Mark Mercer

Expat aging sometime-ski-bum former corporate tool. Currently living in the beachside aging resort town of Atlántida in Uruguay. Sometimes skiing and teaching in Breckenridge, Colorado, USA. Location and velocity cannot be simultaneously observed.
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  • MarkXS

    Another interesting possibility is perhaps more American Airlines service, and better service. Though I have my issues with AA, they are about to come out of bankruptcy reorganization with good contracts with all their unions, a decent plan for the future, and a lot of new planes on order. Thus I expect the USA nonstop connectivity to improve.

    Although a hassle to do international connections in the USA compared to countries that have transit-without-visa, even for US citizens where there is no transit-without-immigration-customs, it still is not too bad. At least not for US citizens and citizens of countries that do not require visas for the USA. The American-British Airways-Iberia transatlantic joint venture is adding several flights daily between Miami (MIA) and London Heathrow (LHR), so if you can deal with a USA transfer, MVD-MIA-LHR and optionally onto the rest of Europe will have more frequencies.