Travel to Latin America from Dulles Airport has been getting more and more convenient. Although United since the merger with Continental has unfortunately "improved" its service to Latin America by dropping its convenient non-stop 767 to Buenos Aires with connections through Houston, Copa Airlines of Panama has been operating a convenient across-the gate area connection via Panama that gets you to Buenos Aires in a daytime flight, leaving here at oh dark thirty and arriving in Buenos Aires around eight...with excellent service....at least when I took it a couple of years ago. The beauty of the Copa connection (and you can do a stop-over in wonderful Panama if you want)is that it provides one-stop easy service to places such as Porto Alegre, Brazil; Sao Paulo; Cordoba, Argentina and, of course, Rio. Meanwhile, TACA of El Salvador has merged with Avianca of Colombia, historically one of Latin America's finest carriers and has rebranded as Avianca. There are now several connections to Central and South America. On April first, Etihad Airways of Abu Dhabi started non-stop service to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. The UAE is also served by Emirates out of Dulles and Qatar Airways flies to Qatar. All three Persian Gulf carriers offer great on board service and go on beyond to India and the Far East. As a former travel agent back in the Medieval Era when we wrote tickets by hand and airlines competed based on their customer service rather than price alone -treating you the passenger as a "commodity" for stock-holders I strongly advise against using airline - and perish the thought - travel agency (without real human agents) web sites to purchase your tickets except for the most simple transactions. I use airline sites because I'm an airline geek and as an ex travel agent know the lingo to stay out of trouble. It is worth the extra $25 to use a real agent such as Voyager Travel in Sterling or Liberty Travel at Dulles Town Center to name a few. A travel agent can help you avoid pit-falls, and if something goes wrong you have a real person to talk and intervene for you. Also, be sure to buy travel insurance! AAA, USAA and your agent all offer reputable plans - I've used USAA's and it is excellent. (More on TravelInsurance Later.)
