Belo Horizonte Airport Guide: Azul’s Hub in Minas Gerais

Belo Horizonte Airport, formally Tancredo Neves International Airport and known to everyone as Confins, serves the capital of Minas Gerais in southeastern Brazil. It lies on a plateau well to the north of the city and is a major hub of Azul, Brazil’s third largest airline. Around 13.3 million passengers used it in 2025, a record. For years the field was an underused white elephant. Today it is one of the fastest growing airports in the country and a genuine connecting point between the Brazilian interior, the coast and the Americas.

Belo Horizonte Airport at a Glance

The IATA code is CNF and the ICAO code is SBCF. The airport sits in the municipality of Confins, about 27 miles (44 km) north of central Belo Horizonte. Elevation is 829 metres (2,721 feet), which gives it cool nights and clear air by Brazilian standards. There is one runway and one integrated passenger terminal, split into Terminals 1 and 2, with a cargo complex alongside.

Traffic in 2025 reached roughly 13.3 million passengers on about 118,000 aircraft movements, up 8 per cent on 2024. Azul runs its largest hub here outside Campinas, and Gol uses the airport as a focus city and houses its main maintenance base on the site. LATAM, Copa and TAP Air Portugal complete the main scheduled line up. The concessionaire BH Airport has run the field since 2014; a majority stake passed to Mexico’s ASUR in late 2025, with Infraero retaining 49 per cent. Flight details are on the airport’s official website.

How Belo Horizonte’s Airport Came to Be

Belo Horizonte flew from Pampulha, a lakeside airport inside the city, for most of the twentieth century. By the early 1980s Pampulha was handling 120 per cent of its 1.3 million passenger capacity and could not grow. Infraero built a new airport at Confins and opened it in 1984. It was renamed in 1986 after Tancredo Neves, the Minas Gerais politician who was elected president of Brazil in 1985 and died before taking office.

The early years were a disappointment. Airlines preferred Pampulha’s convenience and the new field was handling only about 350,000 passengers a year by 2004. The turning point came in March 2005, when the state restricted Pampulha to aircraft with 50 seats or fewer. Around 130 flights moved to Confins at a stroke, and traffic jumped to about 3 million that year.

Azul’s decision to build a hub here from 2008 onwards sealed the airport’s future. Privatisation followed in 2013, with CCR and Flughafen Zurich winning the concession. They extended the runway to 3,600 metres in June 2016 and opened Terminal 2 in December 2016, lifting capacity to about 22 million passengers a year.

Runways at Belo Horizonte Airport

Belo Horizonte Airport has a single asphalt runway, 16/34, measuring 3,600 metres (11,811 feet) by 45 metres. The 2016 extension made it long enough for any wide body to depart at full weight despite the altitude, which matters on hot afternoons when the air thins.

Runway 16 is the preferred direction, with approaches from the north over open farmland and departures turning towards the city. Movements are comfortably within the capacity of one runway, and delays at Confins are rare.

The concession contract called for a 2,500 metre parallel runway by 2020, along with connecting taxiways and a multi storey car park. The parallel runway has not materialised, and the operator has argued that traffic does not yet justify it. The land is reserved, so the option remains open.

Terminals and Airlines

Terminals 1 and 2 at Belo Horizonte Airport are physically one building. Terminal 1 is the original 1984 structure, refurbished, and Terminal 2 is the large extension that opened in 2016 with new piers, air bridges and a wider range of shops. International flights moved into Terminal 2 in January 2017 after a brief spell in a temporary Terminal 3. Domestic flights, which carry the bulk of the traffic, use both.

Azul dominates with a schedule of Embraer E195-E2s, Airbus A320neos and ATR 72-600s fanning out across the interior, plus Airbus A330-900s on the international routes. Gol flies Boeing 737-800s and 737 MAX 8s and keeps a large maintenance hangar beside the apron. LATAM links the city to its Sao Paulo and Brasilia hubs. Copa serves Panama City, TAP serves Lisbon, and LATAM Chile and Sky Airline fly to Santiago.

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Routes and Destinations

Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are the heavy routes from Belo Horizonte Airport, served by Azul, Gol and LATAM many times a day. Brasilia, Salvador, Recife, Fortaleza, Curitiba and Porto Alegre follow. Azul’s hub strategy feeds dozens of smaller cities in Minas Gerais, Bahia, Espirito Santo and the northeast through Confins, so a passenger from Montes Claros can reach Lisbon with one change.

The international board is short but growing. Lisbon is the longest regular route at about 4,620 miles (7,440 km), flown by TAP, with Azul adding Orlando and Fort Lauderdale. Panama City, Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile, Montevideo and Bariloche cover the Americas. Traffic peaks in July, December and January around the school holidays and carnival. Cargo matters too: the complex can handle 18,000 tonnes a year and serves the state’s mining and manufacturing economy.

Getting to and from Belo Horizonte Airport

There is no rail link. The journey to the city runs down the MG-10 highway, upgraded as the Linha Verde, and takes 45 minutes to an hour by car depending on traffic at the city end. Taxis and app cars are plentiful, with the fare to the centre typically around R$150 (roughly £22). Car hire desks occupy the arrivals hall.

The cheapest sensible choice is the executive airport bus into the city, and regular public buses connect with the metro but are slower. The airport has a multi storey car park and surface long stay parking a short walk from the terminal.

Spotting and Photography

Belo Horizonte Airport sits in open country, which helps. The approach to runway 16 passes over open country north of the field, where aircraft can be photographed on short final with the plateau sky behind. Afternoon light favours this side. The terminal’s departure lounges have large windows over the apron and give a good view of the Azul fleet, including the A330neos.

The Gol maintenance hangars and the cargo ramp are visible from the perimeter road but are patrolled. Brazilian airport security tends to be relaxed about cameras in public areas, less so near fences. Keep to the roads and the terminal, do not climb barriers and be ready to explain what you are doing in a few words of Portuguese.

What Comes Next

The concession runs to 2044 and the operator is now ASUR, which brings experience from Cancun and Colombia. The near term agenda is more international flying from Azul, a bigger cargo operation and the Industrial Airport project, which offers tax incentives to businesses that locate beside the field. Terminal capacity of 22 million gives headroom for years of growth.

The parallel runway is the open question. Traffic growth of 8 per cent a year would bring it back onto the agenda within a decade. Confins has transformed from a white elephant into a strategic hub, and Belo Horizonte Airport is heading for 15 million passengers sooner than most forecasts expected. Compare its growth with the rest of Brazil on the Airports of the World map.

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