GRU Terminal 3: Airlines, Gates and How Long It Takes to Walk

Twenty-one airlines, and the letter tells you where to stand

The airport keeps a directory of airlines filtered by terminal, and it is the only place the three check-in islands are attached to names rather than letters. Read on September 16, 2026, Terminal 3 held 21 airlines:

Two entries carry a warning the list does not spell out: Azul and LATAM appear here in their international form only. Both fly their Brazilian domestic routes from other terminals — the most expensive fact at this airport if you are connecting off an international arrival.

The same directory, on the same day, gave Terminal 1 exactly one airline — Azul domestic, check-in A — and Terminal 2 fourteen: Aerolíneas Argentinas, Air Europa, Avianca, Boliviana, Ethiopian, Flybondi, GOL domestic, GOL international, JetSmart, LATAM domestic, Royal Air Maroc, SKY, TAAG and ARAJET. Thirty-six across the airport.

That is why "the international terminal" is a trap: plenty of flights leaving Brazil leave from Terminal 2.

The English page stops one line early

The airport's page about its terminals exists in both languages, and they are not the same page.

The Portuguese one gives Terminal 3 three lines: Check-ins F, G e H, Portões: 301 a 332, and then "Operações internacionais" — international operations — followed by a link to the airline list for that terminal. The English one gives Check-in F, G and H and Gates: 301 to 332, and stops. No line saying what kind of terminal it is, no link to the list. Both read on September 16, 2026.

The omission is not systematic: at Terminal 1 the English page still prints "Airlines: Azul". A visitor reading in English learns which airline uses the smallest terminal, and nothing about the one they will land in.

Gates 311 to 320 are not drawn on the pier

The airport publishes a separate map of the Terminal 3 pier.

Gates 301 to 310 and 321 to 332 are drawn along the building, in pairs, each pair sharing a core of stairs and lifts. Gates 311 to 320 are not there at all. They appear in a box of their own, under a yellow label that reads, in both languages, "Embarque remoto / Remote boarding", with a second tag underneath: Portões/Gates 311-320. A leader line ties that box to a marker on the concourse itself, between gates 308 and 321, beside the lift and escalator symbols.

⚠️ What the map does not say is how you get there, or whether boarding closes earlier. Everything past the label is inference. What is safe to take from it: a gate number in the 310s is not a gate you walk to along the concourse, so read the number rather than assume the 300s are all alike.

The airport prints the walk, in minutes

The departures map marks the walking route along the concourse with small pedestrian tags, in Portuguese and English:

• "Até 6 min. / Up to 6min." where the concourse begins, past the shops
• "Até 8 min. / Up to 8min." twice — by gates 305 and 306, and again by gate 302 at the end of the short arm
• "Até 10 min. / Up to 10min." by gate 324
• "Até 12 min. / Up to 12min." at the far end, by gates 329 to 332

📌 Read that as building size, not as a connection budget: twelve minutes is walking from one end of the pier to the other with nothing in front of you. The airport's minimum connection times are a different number, published by terminal pair in a document for airline schedulers. They are in the guide to connecting through GRU.

What Terminal 3 looks like from the belt

The arrivals map is a floor plan, not a flow chart: it shows where things sit, not the order you pass them.

Baggage belts 301 to 307 fill one hall. "Polícia Federal / Federal Police" and "Alfândega / Customs" are drawn as blocks of their own. And pressed against the customs block, sharing a wall with it, is a black box labelled "Check-in de conexão / Flight connection" — the desk where a bag that has just come off the belt goes back into the system. A second sign further along reads "Conexões / Terminal 2 / Flight connections", the 2 set in Terminal 2's orange.

The rules behind that layout — who collects a bag, who clears immigration — are in the baggage and connections guide and the customs declaration guide. Whether you need a visa at all turns on leaving the transit area: see layovers in Brazil and your own nationality's rule.

Getting out of Terminal 3

Three published ways, and they are not interchangeable.

To Terminal 2, on foot. The airport's terminal-to-terminal chart — which exists in English only as an image — says: "Use the connector from floor 1 to Terminal 2."

To Terminal 1, by bus. The same chart says "Use the transfer on the third arrival of Terminal 3", and the Portuguese transfer page says the same thing in text: Utilize o transfer na terceira calçada do desembarque — the third arrivals kerb. The same page publishes the service: shuttle buses between all three terminals, 04:00 to midnight, waits of up to 15 minutes. Read on September 16, 2026.

By people mover, from 4pm. The operator of the APM publishes, in both languages, a free service between Terminals 1, 2 and 3 and the CPTM station, from 16:00 to midnight, over 2,700 metres and four stations.

⚠️ The catch: the word aeromóvel did not appear on any of the airport's own pages checked on September 16, 2026 — not the transfer pages in either language, not the train pages, not the institutional terminals page, not the Terminal 3 maps. The body that names it is the railway: the CPTM's airport page tells passengers the link from the station to the terminals is free by bus or by aeromóvel, and sends them to the operator's site for the hours.

Out of the airport, the five published ways into the city are in GRU airport to São Paulo; ride apps, the metro fare and a data connection each hold their own surprise.

Sources

• GRU Airport, airline directory — the list by terminal, with each airline's check-in island. Only builds with JavaScript. Accessed September 16, 2026.
• GRU Airport, the terminals, Portuguese — islands, gate range, "Operações internacionais" and the link to the list. Accessed September 16, 2026.
• GRU Airport, the terminals, English — the same block without that line and without the link. Accessed September 16, 2026.
• Terminal 3 departures map — the walking-time tags and the check-in islands. Accessed September 16, 2026.
• Terminal 3 pier map — "Embarque remoto / Remote boarding", gates 311-320. Accessed September 16, 2026.
• Terminal 3 arrivals map — belts, federal police, customs and the flight-connection desk. Accessed September 16, 2026.
• GRU Airport, internal transfer — shuttle hours, the 15-minute wait, the third arrivals kerb. Accessed September 16, 2026.
• AeroGRU, the people mover operator — free, 16:00 to midnight, 2,700 metres, four stations; in English. Accessed September 16, 2026.
• CPTM, Aeroporto-Guarulhos station — the only official transport page that names the aeromóvel. Accessed September 16, 2026.

What we could not verify

• How you reach gates 311 to 320, and whether boarding closes earlier there. The pier map draws the block apart from the building and labels it remote boarding. It does not say bus, walkway or timing, and we found nothing published that does.
• Which gates have an air bridge. The maps never draw the air side — no apron, no aircraft, no bridge at any gate, and no legend entry for one. Reading the remote label as "the others have bridges" would be our inference, not a published fact.
• Whether the Terminal 2-3 connector runs airside or landside. The departures map does print the "Conexões Terminal 2" sign on the air side, but no legend says which area the corridor itself crosses.
• How long the walk is on the arrivals side. The minute tags exist only on the departures map; from belt to connection desk, nobody publishes a figure.
• Whether the airline list is stable. It is a screen reading with a date, not a file: the site's own data endpoint refuses calls from outside, so the list can only be read from the rendered page, and it can change without notice.
• When the English transfer chart was last revised. It is a JPEG whose editing metadata reads January 2022, and the terminal-to-terminal matrix it prints has no text version in either language: the Portuguese page publishes the service and the three kerbs, not which one to take for which pair. It also contradicts itself about Terminal 2, placing that shuttle at the east of the terminal in one column and on the west arrivals kerb in the other.
• How often the people mover runs, and how long a trip takes. The operator publishes hours, route, length and four stations, but no headway and no journey time. Its own site also disagrees with itself on capacity: 200 passengers per vehicle in Portuguese, 230 in English.