TAM Airlines has reported a positive evaluation of the special operations it carried out before and during the World Cup in Brazil, with the carrier having invested over US$21 million to operate a new flight network during the tournament.

Before the event, the airline restructured its flights and created more than 750 additional domestic flights and over 350 additional international flights to serve the host cities.

It also operated a total of 250 charter flights and, in July, created 40 new regular domestic flights to cover demand over the second stage of the tournament.

Overall, TAM transported almost three million football fans within Brazil and operated over 20,000 domestic flights to or from the host cities.

June 20th saw TAM transport the highest number of passengers, with more than 143,000 customers departing and arriving on domestic flights from the host cities.

São Paulo was the city with the highest number of passengers flown by the airline during a single day of operations, with over 50,000 TAM customers arriving or departing from the city on July 11th.

TAM Airlines operated 3,000 international flights to and from Brazil and transported more than 500,000 passengers.

Claudia Sender, chief executive, TAM Airlines, commented: “Our operations were very smooth and we fulfilled our mission of making a decisive contribution to the tournament’s success.

“The balance is very positive and was the result of planning and the good coordination and collaboration we enjoyed with authorities on a daily basis.

“We’re very satisfied with our operational flexibility because we were able to drastically adapt our complex routine to serve a new profile of passengers and, despite the challenges, we were able to maintain high levels of excellence in our service and operational safety.”

Added to all TAM’s domestic operations, the company carried a total of 3.3 million passengers and operated over 23,000 domestic and international flights.

During the entire tournament TAM Airlines maintained a special 24/7 operational control centre to predict potential operational contingency situations and formulate solutions in advance.

TAM achieved excellent operating indicators, with 95 per cent on-time performance and 99.8 per cent service regularity on the flights it operated during the tournament.

The indicators reflect improvement of 2.2 and 1.3 percentage points respectively from the same period of 2013.

These operational indicators were achieved despite the adverse weather conditions that are characteristic of Brazil during the period, especially at airports such as Santos Dumont in Rio de Janeiro.

In addition to the complete restructuring of the flight network, the investments made by TAM Airlines involved monitoring systems, designating six spare aircraft and additional service and maintenance teams, special training programs and new staff positions, safety reinforcement and training, production and distribution of a trilingual passenger guide at 15 airports, 40 multilingual employees offering translation at nine airports, and an internal campaign for promoting employee engagement.