This Budget Airline Just Added Its First Flights to South America, From $99

This Budget Airline Just Added Its First Flights to South America, With Fares From $99 One Way

This budget airline just added its first flights to South America, with new nonstops to three cities from $99, according to the headline doing the rounds. That's the claim. What's missing from it, at least in what has surfaced so far, is the one detail that actually matters before you open a booking tab: which airline, which three cities, and which airport they're flying from.

What's actually confirmed right now

Not much, and I'd rather tell you that straight than dress it up. The claim is a $99 introductory one-way fare on new nonstop routes to South America, described as the airline's first flights to the continent. No airline name, no departure city, no arrival cities, and no start date have turned up in verifiable reporting alongside that figure yet.

Budget carriers do this kind of launch fairly often: a low headline fare to get a route noticed, usually for a narrow booking window and a narrow travel window. Spirit, JetBlue and Avelo have all done South America or Latin America expansions in recent years with exactly this pattern, a splashy low fare, a set number of weekly frequencies, and terms that only apply if you book within a week or two of the announcement.

Which US cities usually get South America nonstops first?

US carriers expanding into South America nonstops have historically started from Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Miami or New York JFK, because those airports already have the demand and the customs infrastructure for the route. If a budget carrier is genuinely adding its first South America flights, one of those departure points is the safe bet, though that's a pattern, not a confirmation of this specific story. Common first destinations for US budget carriers touching South America have been Bogota, Medellin, Lima and Guayaquil, all popular with both leisure travellers and diaspora traffic, which tends to be what makes a new route commercially viable in year one.

How to check if this is real before you book

Go straight to the airline's own newsroom or press release page rather than a syndicated headline, since fare announcements like this are time sensitive and often get rewritten or aggregated with the specifics stripped out. If you can't find a matching press release from a named US budget carrier, the fare probably isn't bookable yet, or the story has been garbled somewhere between the original source and the version you read.

Cross-check on Google Flights or Skyscanner by searching South America routes from major US low-cost hubs. If a $99 one-way fare on a new route exists, it will show up there within a day or two of going on sale.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which budget airline added flights to South America?

That has not been confirmed in reporting available at the time of writing. Carriers like Spirit Airlines, JetBlue and Avelo Airlines have each expanded into Latin America or the Caribbean in recent years, so any of them is plausible, but none has been verified as the airline in this specific claim.

Are $99 flights to South America still available?

There's no way to confirm this without an airline name and a booking link. Introductory fares like $99 typically apply to a short booking window on a handful of dates, so if the story is genuine the cheap seats may already be gone by the time it's widely reported.

How do I track down the real story behind a headline like this?

Search the airline's own press releases rather than relying on aggregator headlines, since fare figures and route names get lost or altered as a story is reshared. The US Department of Transportation and IATA route databases also list new international routes once they are officially filed.