Back in the day when airplanes had limited range and fewer people traveled it was common to see triangle routings (ie. Denver-Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Denver or Kansas City-Orlando-Tampa-Kansas City) or “Fifth Freedom” routes (ie. A US airline flying Tokyo- Manila or Frankfurt-Budapest with no requirement the passenger continue to Seattle or Boston). These days both triangle routes and fifth freedom routes are extremely rare as we live in a world with large hub operations and airplanes that can overfly places they used to stop.

That’s why Azul loading a new nonstop flight from Fort Lauderdale (FLL) to Curaçao this winter is such a newsworthy event. The flight will operate four times weekly on an A 320-200. The route does continue to Belo Horizonte (CNF) , supplementing the two-weekly nonstop flights between FLL and CNF on Azul.

Azul is of course a Brazilian airline that already serves Fort Lauderdale from multiple Brazilian cities. So this new route came as a bit of shock – but might capture some holiday time traffic that might want to vacation in Curaçao this winter.