TAM Flight July 2011

The school has bought our plane tickets! 

I am relieved and excited that we will be officially leaving for Brasilia in almost exactly 2 months from now. The school bought us tickets with TAM even though each ticket was $500 more than the cheapest airfare. Their reasoning is because Copa arrives in Brasilia at an ungodly hour. Regardless of their reasoning, it was thoughtful, kind, and will save us so much money because....dare I say it....the best part of having our tickets with TAM is that they allow excess baggage on their flights!

Paying for excess baggage is extremely inexpensive (in comparison to shipping companies). Can you imagine $150 for 70 lbs?? That's amazing! Now we can take our most prized belongings without having to worry to much. We can't be foolish, especially because we have a domestic flight that may not be as generous with all of our baggage, but we'll see how that all goes.

My husband wanted to take his smaller suitcase which is ideal for domestic travel, but not so much for international-I'm-trying-to-shove-all-that-I-own-into-2-suitcases-that-can-only-weigh-up-to-70-lbs trips. Now that we don't have a limit we can take it all. I mean, within reason of course. We don't want to prevent the plane from getting off the ground because it's so full of coffee makers, blenders, a DVD player, and my books.

TAM also allows pets in the cabin as long as they're 10 kgs or less. Our cat is there, but with the carrier his weight cannot exceed 10 kgs so he's on a diet from now until July. This won't hurt him; he's a bit overweight. The only real concern should then be that the carrier case that we have is too large per TAM's pet policy. What's the solution? Buy a soft carrier that we can manipulate to look the right size.

Now we've flown with TAM in the past, but unfortunately we never bothered with frequent flyer miles. This time we'll get 'em. I guess then that it's a good thing that we have to fly all the way to Sao Paulo to turn around and head north to Brasilia.

Anyway, no need to start worrying about the cat, the long flight, or anything else. We're grateful that the school is looking out for us and that we are able to fly on the date that we chose. With our flight to New York next month and then of course this one, we have a lot to look forward to. I LOVE to fly and am excited to have the tickets in my inbox.