What Is GIG Airport? Rio's Galeão, and the Cap on Santos Dumont

IATA's code is GIG, the operator says RIOgaleão, and the ports and airports ministry says Tom Jobim: one airport, whose operator's shares were auctioned in March 2026.

What GIG is, and who runs it

Law 9,778 of 1999 gave the old Galeão airport its full name: Aeroporto Internacional do Rio de Janeiro/Galeão – Antonio Carlos Jobim. DECEA, the air force department that publishes Brazil's aeronautical records, files it under the city of Rio de Janeiro, 13 km northeast of the center, and tags it INTL, for international.

The concession was auctioned on November 22, 2013. ANAC, the federal civil aviation regulator, signed the contract as granting authority, and it started on May 7, 2014, for 25 years. The company that holds it, the Concessionária Aeroporto Rio de Janeiro S.A., trades as RIOgaleão. Its controlling shareholder is Rio de Janeiro Aeroporto S.A., and Infraero, the federal airport company, holds the other 49%, a stake the 2026 sale is designed to take out.

GIG, SBGL and RIO: reading the codes

IATA, the airlines' trade association, returns GIG in its code search as "Galeao-A.C.Jobim Intl", under the city name Rio de Janeiro. DECEA's record uses the ICAO code, SBGL. Santos Dumont follows the same pattern: SDU for IATA, SBRJ in the aeronautical record.

Search IATA for "Rio de Janeiro" and the first line is not an airport. It reads "Metropolitan Area", code RIO. Four airports follow under that city name: Galeão (GIG), Santa Cruz AB (SNZ), Santos Dumont (SDU) and Jacarepaguá (RRJ), checked on September 28, 2026. The area code works like SAO in São Paulo, and the GRU guide explains the mechanism.

Two of the four barely matter to a passenger. DECEA files Santa Cruz as a military aerodrome, and Jacarepaguá handled about 19,000 passengers in 2025 by our sum of ANAC's movement data.

Santos Dumont, the downtown airport with a cap

Santos Dumont sits 2 km east of the center by DECEA's record, and Infraero runs it. Its record carries no international tag, and in ANAC's data all but 213 of its 2025 passengers flew domestic.

How many it may carry is decided in Brasília. On August 10, 2023, CONAC, the federal civil aviation council, ordered that from January 2, 2024 its regular flights stay within 400 km and link only domestic airports. It was revoked by a resolution dated November 8, 2023, before taking effect.

The same day, the ministry of ports and airports announced the replacement: no limit on destinations, but a ceiling of 6.5 million passengers a year from January 2024, citing service levels and the airport's operating capacity. In December 2024 it said the limit was unchanged.

ANAC's movement data, as we summed them:

The link to Galeão is written down. A committee set up at the Federal Court of Accounts (TCU) to renegotiate Galeão's contract reported that the Santos Dumont limit affects Galeão's competitiveness and finances. The 2025 settlement it produced sets a schedule: 8 million passengers in 2025, 9 million in 2026, 10 million in 2027, and from 2028 no cap beyond the airport's capacity. If a federal act other than a safety rule sets a different limit, Galeão's contract is rebalanced. The same report says the schedule takes effect once the renegotiated contract is signed, and in 2025 Santos Dumont carried 6.2 million, not 8. On February 3, 2026, the ministry announced that the federal government had decided to revoke the loosening of Santos Dumont's operating restrictions. In September 2026 the TCU told the ministry and the Treasury that keeping the restrictions would cost Infraero R$ 1 billion from 2026 to 2030.

A hand-back requested, then an auction

In February 2022 the operator formally asked for a relicitação, the federal procedure for returning a concession to be auctioned again. ANAC's technical note, as summarized in the TCU report, traced the request to stagnant traffic and cash too thin for the fixed annual payments bid in 2013. Decree 11,171 of August 11, 2022 qualified the airport for it, and the amendment followed on November 14, 2022.

The TCU settlement swapped the hand-back for a venda assistida, an assisted sale: a renegotiated contract, and an auction for 100% of the operator's shares, open to the controlling shareholder. Had the sale failed, the hand-back would have resumed automatically. A transitional amendment, rewritten in February 2026, governs the concession meanwhile.

The auction ran on March 30, 2026, at the B3 exchange in São Paulo:

ANAC's committee declared Aena's subsidiary the winner in April, and the agency's board confirmed the result on May 4, 2026. Aena runs Spain's airport network and, through its Brazilian arm, Congonhas in São Paulo. The share purchase and the renegotiated amendment are still to come: on September 28, 2026, ANAC's list of amendments ended at the transitional one, and the operator's own page still presented Changi Airports International of Singapore as its partner.

Terminal 2 does most of the work

The operator's pages name two terminals. Terminal 1 appears as an economy parking lot, as the home of the airport hotel and as a stop for buses and the BRT, the city's bus rapid transit. The operator's bulletin of April 10, 2026 said more domestic flights in the afternoon would require recurring use of Terminal 1 in the evenings, without saying for which flights. Its airline directory, read airline by airline on September 28, 2026, gives Terminal 2, level 2, for 23 of 24 airlines, with check-in islands from A to I. GOL's page names no terminal, only islands D and E on level 2, for domestic and international departures. Azul's page lists domestic departures only, and LATAM's international only.

In ANAC's data for 2024 and 2025, the latest years published, not one passenger was filed under Terminal 1, by our sum. The taxi cooperatives sit on Terminal 2's arrivals level.

The operator's minimum connection times are 35 minutes domestic to domestic, 55 international to international, 60 domestic to international and 90 international to domestic. An international arrival continuing on a domestic flight means reclaiming the bag and checking it again, which the connection guide traces to a customs rule rather than to any one airport. How heavy that bag may be is each airline's call.

No entry card awaits you (what replaced it), and the customs declaration is filed online, and only by some travelers. A visa depends on the passport you carry, and a connection that never leaves the airside follows a separate rule.

Getting into the city, at the city's prices

Taxis can charge in two ways, both set by the city. Under the city's current prepaid table, in force since January 11, 2026, taxi cooperatives at five tourist entry points, GIG among them, may sell a fixed price by neighborhood: you buy a voucher at the counter, and the ride costs exactly the voucher's value. The table is optional for the taxi companies, and the choice of the meter belongs to the passenger. Tolls are extra.

The city's prepaid prices from GIG, checked on September 28, 2026:

The city's table does not say when the higher column, Tarifa 2, applies; the copy the airport links defines it as 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. from Monday to Saturday, plus all day on Sundays and holidays, the hours when the meter charges its night rate.

Ride apps: the operator's page describes an exclusive Uber pickup point on the arrivals level, to the left as you leave arrivals. Who regulates the apps, and what Rio did with that power, is in the Uber guide.

Buses: Mobi-Rio, which runs the city's BRT, has a direct executive bus to Terminal Gentileza, the city's hub where the BRT meets the VLT, the downtown light rail. By Mobi-Rio's timetable on September 28, 2026, it costs R$ 15, takes about 25 minutes and leaves GIG from 6:00 a.m. to 11:40 p.m. every day. From Gentileza, VLT Line 1 runs to Santos Dumont. The stopping BRT line 42 runs to Madureira and calls at Vicente de Carvalho, where it connects with Metro Line 2. The airport's BRT page lists R$ 5.00, the city bus fare since January 4, 2026; its bus page still shows R$ 4.30, the 2023 fare.

For the beach districts in the taxi table, crime data by police-station area says more than any citywide rate.

How many passengers GIG handles

For 2025 the operator reports 17,906,990 passengers, 12,190,064 domestic and 5,716,926 international, with 129,363 landings and takeoffs. Our sum of the movement data filed with ANAC gives exactly the same totals.

That is the highest total in the series the operator publishes, which starts in 2015 at 16.9 million and bottoms out in 2021 at 3.9 million. For January to August 2026, the months on the page on September 28, 2026, the count stands at 12,713,943.

Sources

Accessed September 28, 2026.

• Presidency — Law 9,778/1999; Decree 11,171/2022; Decree 9,957/2019, art. 3
• ANAC — the Galeão concession and its amendments, with Decision 739/2026 and the transitional amendment; the assisted sale: auction notice, items 1.3.4 and 1.3.7, ranking, Decision 745/2026, the settlement, clauses 2.2 and 3.6.5, and the TCU committee report, paragraphs 15 to 18 and 139 to 145; the movement data, 36 monthly files for 2023 to 2025, summed for SBGL, SBRJ and SBJR
• Official Gazette — CONAC Resolution 1/2023 and Resolution 2/2023; TCU Judgment 2538/2026, item 9.2, and Judgment 2245/2026; CADE's June 12, 2026 decision in case 08700.004690/2026-38
• Ministry of Ports and Airports — notes of November 8, 2023 and December 4, 2024, read in the Internet Archive: the live pages are restricted during the 2026 election period; the note of February 3, 2026, archived
• IATA — code search, for GIG, SDU, RIO and Rio de Janeiro. DECEA — AISWEB records for SBGL, SBRJ and SBSC
• RIOgaleão — about, airport numbers, the airline directory, page by page, taxis and apps, BRT and buses; the April 10, 2026 operating bulletin, parking, the airport hotel and the FAQ
• Rio city hall — taxi fares, Resolution 3,893; prepaid tables, Resolutions 3,898 and 3,899, with the conventional and executive tables; bus fares; Terminal Gentileza; Mobi-Rio and the VLT; the 2025 Tom Jobim table, archived
• Aena — first-half 2026 results and August 2026 traffic; the March 30, 2026 release on the award

Method on how we research; Jeff Bruno writes from Curitiba. Next door: getting around, all guides.

What we could not verify

• When Aena takes over. ANAC's schedule dates nothing after May 26, 2026, the deadline for the conditions that precede the share purchase. Its amendments end at the transitional one, Aena's August 2026 report counts 17 Brazilian airports without Galeão, and the operator's releases, which start on April 14, 2026, return nothing for Aena, venda or leilão (sale, auction). Competition regulator CADE cleared the deal without restrictions on June 12, 2026, the TCU closed its file on the hand-back in August, and Aena said in March it expected to close in the second half of 2026; no transfer had been published by September 28, 2026.
• The number behind the 2026 cap. The ministry's February 2026 note announces the decision to revoke the loosening without restating a figure, the 2023 order that set 6.5 million is not in the Official Gazette's search, and the ministry's news pages are restricted until the election period ends.
• What Terminal 1 handles today. The operator's April 2026 bulletin announces recurring evening use without saying for which flights, no airline page lists Terminal 1, and its FAQ mentions it only as the site of the airport hotel. ANAC has not yet published 2026 movement data.
• When BRT line 42 runs. Mobi-Rio's own data give two timetables for it, 24 hours in one field and 4 a.m. to 10:10 p.m. in another, so we publish neither.