The airport most travelers never see is quietly becoming one of Brazil’s fastest-growing gateways. JHSF will launch a sixth expansion of São Paulo Catarina Executive International Airport.
The project will add three hangars, totaling about 10,000 square meters, and 15,000 square meters of apron. The first phase is due in the first half of 2026. It’s the latest step in a rapid climb that began when the site opened in December 2019 with two hangars.
Today, there are 16 hangars covering roughly 50,000 square meters, with more than 170 based aircraft and round-the-clock operations on a 2,470-meter runway in São Roque, about 74 kilometers from central São Paulo.
The story behind the story is demand. Executive aviation in Brazil’s business capital has outgrown the city’s traditional airports, which face noise limits, curfews, and limited hangar space.
Catarina was approved for international operations in 2021 and designed from the ground up for business jets: 24/7 hours, long-range performance, and a friction-light experience.
Private Capital Eases Latin America’s Corporate Travel Bottleneck
In the second quarter of 2025 the airport handled 7,024 movements, including 552 international flights—nearly two-thirds more than a year earlier—and local operators describe a waiting list of more than 100 aircraft for space. That is why expansions have come in quick succession.
An ecosystem has formed around this growth. The airport offers concierge services, helicopter transfers, and premium onboard catering, and it hosts maintenance capabilities such as a Dassault Falcon MRO.
For owners and corporate flight departments, this clustering reduces downtime and turns Catarina into a one-stop hub for international missions—often freeing capacity at São Paulo’s urban airports for commercial traffic.
Why it matters beyond Brazil: this is private capital solving a real infrastructure bottleneck in Latin America’s biggest business city.
It signals confidence in the region’s post-pandemic corporate travel and trade, and it shows how aviation demand is reorganizing itself—toward specialized, 24/7 facilities that can support nonstop links between São Paulo and North America or Europe. The square meters added this year are modest; the strategic message is not.
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This article was produced by The Rio Times’ automated AI newsroom. Editorial responsibility: Matthias Camenzind, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief. The Rio Times also runs Ask Rio Times, which answers from 100,000+ of our own articles, the daily Latin America Power Map, and prediction-market odds on elections and markets.. How we use AI · Report an error
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