VARIG Lockheed Electra Part 1 – Ponte Aerea Early 1990s
Details
THIS FILM CONTAINS PORTUGUESE LANGUAGE CONTENT
The Ponte Aerea was a pooled “air bridge” operation between the two largest cities in Brazil, namely Rio and Sao Paulo.
The service operated hourly flights between the two cities with even more flights at peak times, with Lockheed L-188 Electra aircraft operated by VARIG, and revenues split between VARIG, VASP, Cruzeiro, and Trans Brazil.
JetFlix founder Henry Tenby made several visits to VARIG in the late 1980s and early 1990s to document the operation for Airliners Magazine, and had great pleasure in arranging an air-to-air photo session with a VARIG Electra from their Ponte Alegre maintenance base in September of 1988.
In the 1970s and 1980s, airline buffs from all over the world travelled to Brazil to visit and fly on the famous Ponte Aerea “air bridge” Electra operation between Rio’s Santos Dumont airport and Congonhas airport in Sao Paulo, with both airports situated in the city centre of each location.
Sadly, the VARIG Electras were phased out in 1991 having been in operation since the 1960s, and the air bridge was taken over by new generation jetliners. Naturally, the scene had lost the magical appeal it had when the VARIG Electras were on strength.
This film was produced by VARIG in the early 1990s as a celebration of the Ponte Aerea with lots of neat footage of the Electras coming and going, interlaced with staff interviews and shared memories of this wonderful operation which is now distant history. The film was given to Henry Tenby by VARIG’s PR Manager Mr. Carlos Bueyes, and it is our pleasure to share it with the JetFlix TV community. We hope you enjoy the film, even if you cannot understand Portuguese.
2 Responses to “VARIG Lockheed Electra Part 1 – Ponte Aerea Early 1990s”
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Language aside, wonderful footage. Between two city airports. As a side note, the Santos Dumont Airport in Rio, named after the famous aviator. is also the name used by Cartier in it’s first Pilot watch. Although most people know Cartier Santos Dumont as a dressy wrist watch, it was first designed for the pilot by Louis Cartier, as an alternative for the pilot not having to fumble for his pocket watch during flight. Personally, I love both watches and aviation, and it is amazing how closely tied they are.
It was brilliant to see all the Electras lined up outside the terminal building.
Carl
Thank you for sharing this interesting insight on the cross over between watches and aviation Carl. It is funny you mentioned this, as I was recently passing through Heathrow airport terminal 2, and the Rolex has an extensive duty free shop in the shopping area where passengers wait for their gates to be announced. So I spent a good amount of time admiring the Rolex watches and their discounted prices for duty free purchase, which were quite good deals. But I also noticed that Rolex has a line of watches specially engineered for aviators. Which I was not aware of! I think it might be called the Air King line, or something like that. They were even giving out free 2018 Rolex catalogues, which are heavy bound hard cover books! There was no cost for these Rolex catalogues, but I was already very heavy in my baggage so I could not take one to add to my weight. But it was a lovely book!