I recently needed to book a one-way flight from Asuncion, Paraguay to Belo Horizonte, Brazil. GOL Airlines (known as Gol Linhas Aéreas in its home country of Brazil) had a convenient schedule at an agreeable price. So I thought I would try to book a ticket with them.

I book many of my flights directly on the airline’s website and it usually only takes me a few minutes. This was just a simple one-way booking, so it should be simple, right? Well, not quite…

Over the following three hours, I experienced so many problems trying to book a flight on the GOL Airlines website that it can only be described as a comedy of errors.

Problem 1: The generic error message

The GOL Airlines website has 11 different versions, based on the country that you select. As “Australia” was not one of the listed countries, I selected “Others” which is an English-language version of the website that prices fares in US Dollars.

I searched for flights and before I could even view the options, I got a generic error message. I also got the same error when setting my location to USA.

For some reason, GOL just didn’t seem to like that I was searching for flights in Australia. So, I fired up my VPN and changed my IP address location to Brazil.

Problem 2: The website wouldn’t accept my date of birth

With a VPN running, I was able to select a flight and started filling in my personal details. But, no matter what date I entered in the “date of birth” field, the GOL website just would not accept it. Every possible combination of numbers in the date field was apparently invalid, and therefore, I could not continue past this page.

Problem 3: No Brazilian ID

Unable to get any further with my location set to “USA” or “Others”, I switched over to the Brazilian version of the GOL website. This caused the language to change to Portuguese and the currency to Brazilian Reals. But the price was basically the same (taking into account current exchange rates) and I understand enough Portuguese to book a flight.

This time, my date of birth was accepted and I was able to get up to the payment page.

When entering your details towards the start of the booking process, GOL’s Brazilian website asks for your “CPF” (Cadastro de Pessoas Físicas). This is a Brazilian tax ID number, which I obviously don’t have because I don’t live in Brazil.

At the start of the booking process, you can tick a box to say that you don’t have a CPF. But on the payment page, it again asks for your CPF and it’s a required field. Without a CPF, I couldn’t continue.

I have seen similar things before when trying to book flights within South America from the local country’s website. In some cases, airlines deliberately don’t allow foreign tourists to book on the local website because the price is much lower. But there was no price difference here, regardless of the booking method or currency.

Problem 4: Can’t select the number of payment instalments

Since I was booking a flight departing from Paraguay, I then switched to the Paraguayan version of the GOL Airlines website. This changed the language to Spanish and the currency to Paraguayan Guaraní. My Spanish is almost non-existent but I wasn’t about to give up – so proceeded with the help of Google Translate.

This time, I was able to get to the payment page and there was no requirement to enter a Brazilian CPF number. But when it came to entering my payment details, the website asked how many instalments I wanted to pay in. (That’s the “número de plazos” field.)

I wanted to pay the full amount in one go, but it’s fairly common in parts of South America to pay for large purchases such as flights in instalments. So, the question itself wasn’t a problem.

But to answer this question, you needed to select an option from a drop-down box. And when you clicked on the box, no options appeared to select. So, it was impossible to actually answer the question.

Problem 5: My credit card declined

Eventually, I found a workaround for the above problem (you needed to enter all other payment details before any options appeared). I tried to proceed with making a payment. However, the GOL website declined my credit card payment.

Problem 6: None of my other cards worked either

Thinking it might be a problem with that particular credit card, I tried multiple other credit and debit cards. In some cases, I even received an SMS code from my bank which I entered into the website. But the payments never, ever went through.

I even called my bank, and they told me they had no record of GOL attempting to put through any charges on my cards.

Problem 7: Peru’s website says no flights are running

By this point, I was pretty close to giving up. But I thought I might as well try using another version of the GOL website in case that made any difference. I selected “Peru” as my country because this priced everything in US Dollars, while at least letting me reach the payment page.

I didn’t get far, though. This brought up a new error message saying there were no operational flights on the route I was searching.

My travel agent to the rescue…

At this point, I contacted my travel agent who was able to book the flights for me. Instead of wasting three hours doing all of the troubleshooting I’ve mentioned above, I should have just done that in the first place!

I also needed to book some Avianca flights as part of the same trip. Although Avianca’s website seemed to work much better, it too did not accept any of my Australian credit or debit cards. So, my travel agent organised those flights for me as well.

So, how were the flights?

In case you’re wondering, I’ve since taken the two flights with GOL Airlines and the experience on both flights couldn’t have been more different.

The good news is that GOL Airlines seems to maintain its planes better than its website. Both planes seemed new and in good condition, although the safety card was missing from my seat pocket on one of the flights.

My first flight from Asunción to São Paulo ran on time and the on-board service was really good. As an added bonus, we even got a glimpse of the Iguazu Falls from the air.

My second flight was cancelled around five minutes before the scheduled departure time, and I had to stand for over two hours in a queue to get rebooked. I also got downgraded on the second flight and arrived at my destination five hours late.

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 90 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include aviation, economics & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.