Starting June 4, 2024, the American airline Southwest will operate the Orlando, Florida (MCO) – San José, Costa Rica (SJO) route with a daily flight permanently, the company announced this past Thursday. Florida is one of the states with the best prospects for visiting the country and the cities with the highest number of travelers to Costa Rica.
The flight will depart from Orlando airport at 11:30 am (US time) and arrive in San Jose at 12:45 pm (local time). The return flight will take off at 8:55 a.m. from the Juan Santamaría airport and will arrive in Orlando at 2:15 p.m. (US time).
Baltimore and Denver
Also starting June 4 and until August 4, 2024, Southwest will go from one to two weekly flights (Saturdays and Sundays) from the US cities of Baltimore and Denver to San José, facilitating the arrival of more tourists to Costa Rica at the beginning of the summer and vacation season in North America.
“Air connectivity plays a fundamental role in the development of our tourism sector. This announcement is the result of the work we do at the ICT, in this case in conjunction with AERIS, to attract airlines. We hope to close the year with an income of close to 2.5 million tourists, which would exceed the numbers of visits by air prior to the pandemic,” said William Rodríguez, Minister of Tourism.
Contributing to tourism development
“The strengthening of routes and increased frequencies to Baltimore and Denver, as well as the new route to Orlando, represents a milestone for tourism and connectivity in our country, this is an example of the result of the joint work between the government and AERIS for continue contributing to tourism development. We are extremely pleased with Southwest for trusting Costa Rica as a destination, generating new opportunities for passengers to live the pure life experience,” said Ricardo Hernández, executive director of AERIS Holding Costa Rica.The United States is our main tourist issuing market, between January and September of this year 1,095,135 tourists have visited us from that country.
