Sao Paulo Guarulhos Airport

✅ Trip Verified | Airport does not have good communication displays. Although, this airport is very clean and give support in excellence to all customers, whether in domestic or international flights and its connections. There are many good (whereas high cost) restaurants and snack services inside the lounge. Very respected airport in my detailed view.

✅ Trip Verified | The airport is dirty, old, and very badly organized. Almost all of the staff speaks nothing but Portuguese, so it is nearly impossible to communicate. I speak English, Italian, German and a bit of French and Spanish as well, well that wasn't enough to understand where I had to go to catch my connection. The signs are poorly located, and have nearly no information on them. If you have to catch a connecting flight, make sure to know exactly what terminal and gate you are leaving from before you get to the airport. There are almost no information screens displaying departing flights, and to connect to the internet it will take an age! You basically have to provide even your shoe number! This airport makes you think twice if you even want to go to Brazil in the first place!

✅ Trip Verified | It makes all the difference whether you are using Terminals 1 and 2, or the (new-ish) Terminal 3. Terminals 1 and 2 are looking very tired - 3 is much nicer and has better facilities. What I hope is permanent is the much improved immigration at Terminal 3 - maybe due to e-passport gates for Brazilians? Anyway, I usually queued for an hour at immigration, due to several international flights arriving at once. This time, arriving on LATAM, all the Brazilians went through the e-passport gates, and no queue at all at immigration.

❎ Not Verified | Most crew speak only Portuguese and are unlikely to help you. Screens don't display the correct information and I walked 40 minutes until I found one that was working. Walked all over the place and couldn't find a single information desk. Both flights I had through this airport got delayed and boarding is the worse I've seen in any airport I went through.

❎ Unverified | I think it's ridiculous that an international airport of this size and status only accepts local currency at all shops except duty free. Took me literally 50 minutes to buy a bottle of water with USD. Very few staff speak English. Duty free shop refused to let me leave without a useless plastic bag with "be the nature's best friend" printed, as apparently security needs to see the bag for me to leave the shop, even though I have two printed receipts.

✅ Verified Review | Guarulhos has got to be one of the world's worst major cities airport. Small, confusing, with little regard for the passenger. Would say the departure experience is far worse than the arrival one. More often than not passengers are bussed out to the plane, with a boarding process as primitive as one could imagine. Upon arrival at the departure terminals, it is difficult to find out where the check-in desks are. The signs are scarce and not much help. Far from a pleasant way to start a trip, even more so when facing a 10+ hour flight.

I arrived from Rio GIG on board TAM at Guarulhos terminal 1 at 16.20 to connect to SAA, STD 18.40 at terminal 3. At passport control there were 6 counters open out of 21 for the range of departure gates assigned to our SAA flight and a number of other long haul flights with medium to large planes. This is probably the most busy time at Guarulhos. We and about 200 other pax for this SAA flight, as well as another 1500 pax for other long haul flights departing from the same range of gates queued for almost two hours at passport control and hence almost missed our flight which was no 'hot connex' at all. All those flights were delayed by 30 minutes or more because of that. Staff couldn't care less. Never ever had such a bad experience at any airport.

Arrival, terminal looks clean but aging. you can tell right away that this airport has seen better days. The smell of old airport lingers. It's also a bit dark. Signage are OK. Free wifi. Carousel are old fashioned and TV monitor are aging as well. Washrooms facility in the baggage claim. Clean but again old and tiny. Since thre's only 2 of us this time, we opted to take the Airporter. We paid about BRL42 (USD 10). GRU is the farthest airport to town and it will take about 40-1 hour depending on traffic and taxi will cost about BRL120-150 (USD 30-45). THe airporter stops on the major hotel in Sao Paulo and then along Paulista. We stayed at Renaissance and the stop is just outside the hotel so it's very very convenient. Departure, our flight was at 1020PM which is the busiest time at GRU airport as most flight to North America and some Europe departs at that time so the airport was quite busy. Hard to find the check in area for our flight as we did not find any monitor. GRU also utilizes the Mobile Apps Scan and Go so you can have your boarding pass on your phone and you just need to scan it. Check in was a breeze and then we head to the security area. The thing I hate the most in GRU airport is the electrical outlet. They do not have the International standard socket so you will need to buy an adapter/converter at the store so you can charge your phone. I find it also weird that very few airport staff speaks English. The terminal is serving the North America and other International flights and yet it was a struggle to order a simple coffee at Starbucks! Again same set up as in GIG, all departure gates has stanchions and signage for your boarding zone so people line up and not scattered around waiting to board. Good PA system. Once your inside the secured area by the gate, there are many options for food and drinks and the prices are reasonable and even cheaper except again for souvenirs shops. They are horrible. Shooter glass was selling for $15USD.

Flew CNF-GRU-JFK and DFW-GRU-CNF. Long transit times as I had two different reservations for the international and domestic flights and had to be on the safe side. It was my second time in international transit at GRU since T3 opened. The airport does feel less crowded than before. The walk from T1 to T3 is a long one, but in my experience the shuttles are often no faster, they just spare the walk. I noticed some inconsistencies in the signage arriving at T3 through the tunnel. The overal experience on departure to JFK was a good one, only real problem were the LONG lines for exit immigration control, but I suppose this is the Federal's Police fault, not the airport´s. The lounge used by AA is nothing special, but I understand they are in the process of adding their own Admiral's Club. Upon returning, no major hassles but the bags tagged Priority were the last ones to arrive. I`ve contacted the airport and they replied saying it´s the airline that´s responsible for baggage handling.

Very good Airport, especially Terminal 3. Terminal 1-2 are also good but limited facilites. Staff are very helpful.