The sector is held by Azul, LATAM Brasil, Gol and LATAM.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
GRU Sao Paulo to REC Recife
Guarulhos International, Brazil, to Guararapes International, Brazil. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- 11.5 times a day
- Great circle
- 2,101 km
- Block, estimated
- 3h 11m
- Door to door
- 9h 56m
What GRU to REC looks like
The GRU to REC sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
Sao Paulo GRU to Recife REC is a medium haul sector of 2,101 km by great circle, flown nonstop 11.5 times a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 2,101 km, 830 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 3h 11m.
Sao Paulo GRU is a large airport in the network held here, 111 scheduled destinations and 511.3 departures a day. Recife REC has 37 destinations and 86 departures a day.
Sao Paulo carries about 5.9 times the departures of Recife, so a courier who has to be rebooked has far more to work with at one end of this pair than at the other.
Sao Paulo and Recife keep the same clock all year, so the arrival time is the departure time plus the block and nothing else.
The pair sits inside the Americas, a corridor where the site already publishes 13 written lanes that go into customs and ground detail this page does not.
Who flies the sector, and how often
Average daily frequencies on GRU to REC from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| GRU to REC | 11.46 | 80.2 | Azul, LATAM Brasil, Gol, LATAM |
| REC to GRU | 10.14 | 71 | Azul, Gol |
4 carriers are recorded on the sector, so a missed departure is normally a rebooking rather than a lost day.
At 11.5 times a day there is usually another departure within a few hours, which is what makes a same day booking on this pair realistic.
Between them the two directions put about 151.2 departures a week on GRU to REC, which is the number that decides whether a seat can be found today or on Thursday.
The clock from collection to signature
The same ground timings the route calculator starts from, applied to the 3h 11m block time on GRU to REC. Change any of them in the tool further down and the total moves with them.
| Stage | Allowed | Elapsed |
|---|---|---|
| Collection and the run to GRU | 90 min | 1h 30m |
| At GRU before departure | 180 min | 4h 30m |
| GRU to REC in the air, estimated | 191 min | 7h 41m |
| Formalities at REC | 90 min | 9h 11m |
| Delivery run in Recife | 45 min | 9h 56m |
| Door to door | 596 min | 9h 56m |
On the desk standard ground timings, ninety minutes to collect and reach the airport, three hours at the airport before departure, ninety minutes of arrival formalities and a forty five minute delivery run, the door to door figure for GRU to REC is 9h 56m.
A courier who leaves Sao Paulo at 09:00 local is on the ground in Recife at about 12:11 local and at the door by 14:26 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Recife, the last useful departure from Sao Paulo is around 12:34 local.
When the nonstop does not work
Every airport that joins the two ends, ranked by when they land, among the ones whose weaker leg is dependable enough to plan on. Connection time is allowed for the size of the hub. 15 of them join GRU to REC.
| Connecting at | GRU to hub, flights a day | Hub to REC, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Salvador SSA | 16.14 | 5.14 | 2,101 | 4h 48m |
| Rio de Janeiro GIG | 13.14 | 6.43 | 2,196 | 4h 52m |
| Brasilia BSB | 13.29 | 6.29 | 2,509 | 5h 13m |
| Fortaleza FOR | 15.29 | 6.43 | 2,974 | 5h 55m |
| Porto Alegre POA | 25.29 | 1.14 | 3,828 | 6h 53m |
| Belem BEL | 9.71 | 2.14 | 4,140 | 7h 18m |
With 11.5 times a day on the nonstop, a connection here is a disruption plan rather than a routing, and it is listed because a closed runway or a cancellation wave is exactly when nobody has time to work it out.
15 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Salvador SSA, where the weaker of the two legs still runs 5.1 times a day.
Through SSA the routing covers 2,101 km against the 2,101 km nonstop track and takes about 4h 48m in the air and on the ground at the hub, allowing 60 minutes to connect at an airport of that size.
That is only 1h 37m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Rio de Janeiro GIG at 4h 52m and Brasilia BSB at 5h 13m hold the same connection, so a booking has three hubs to try before it has to wait for the nonstop.
If nothing suitable leaves Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo CGH is 28 km away by great circle and carries 42 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
Industry within reach of the two ends
Public manufacturing and research sites whose logistics run through GRU or REC. Listed as industrial geography, not as customers of anyone.
- Embraer, Sao Jose dos CamposCommercial and executive jet assembly. A Brazilian line supplied largely from Europe and North America. Logistics through Sao Paulo GRU.
Plan Sao Paulo to Recife yourself
The same tool the dispatchers use, open to anybody and free. It is loaded with this pair already. Change either end, add a stopover or a preferred airline, and it works out the connection, the transit and the door to door clock, with the real departures underneath. Put it on your own site if it is useful to you.
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Restrictions
Where this came from, and where to look next
- Carriers and frequencies: AeroDataBox scheduled route statistics, retrieved 2026-09-07. Average daily flights, not a timetable.
- Distances: great circle from published coordinates. They read short against a flown track, which is why the block time above applies a factor to them.
- Block and connection times: the same model the route calculator lower down this page runs, at the same rounding.
- Restrictions: the airport notes file, checked 2026-09-07.
- Industrial sites: public company information. Nothing here says or implies that any company named is a customer of any courier operator.
Who publishes this. OnBoard Courier is a placement desk in Dubai. An assignment is carried out by a vetted partner operator, with the desk as the single point of contact from the quote to the signature. This page exists because our own dispatchers need the answer for GRU to REC in the twenty minutes before a promise is made, and a reference only one operator can read is not a reference. Free to read, quote and cite. Found an error? Tell us and we will correct it.
If you need something moved rather than looked up, the desk prices a hand carry in fifteen minutes.
- The GRU airport entry
- The REC airport entry
- Hand carry into Brazil
- The written lane, Doha to Sao Paulo
- The written lane, Dubai to Sao Paulo
- The written lane, Houston to Sao Paulo
- The route calculator
More pairs through GRU and REC: Frankfurt to Sao Paulo, London to Sao Paulo, Amsterdam to Sao Paulo, Milan to Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo to Santiago, Barcelona to Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo to Rome, Zurich to Sao Paulo.