It is no secret that I have an obsession with South America, as a Colombian 🇨🇴 I do have a bit of bias towards it but it is home to many amazing cities, sights, food and especially people. I don’t think I’ve ever truly had a negative experience anywhere I’ve been through in the except for maybe the last time I went to Cali. But for the most part, you are perfectly fine traveling across the continent to explore new places, cultures and try new foods! It isn’t also terribly hard to reach either especially if you live a very big Hispanic concentrated area like Miami 🏝️😎 New York City 🍎🗽 or even Los Angeles 🌴📸 most major cities are just 1 flight away or maybe 1 layover away. This is also why I consider MIA to be American Airlines best hub since due to the strategic location and big Hispanic diaspora, they serve pretty much every country in Latin/South America with a few exceptions mostly related to safety concerns in countries like Haiti 🇭🇹 or Venezuela 🇻🇪 but other than that, AA has got you covered and today I am off to a new country you may or may not have heard of. It is ranked as one of the safest in the continent and never gets as much praise as its next door neighbors Brazil 🇧🇷 and Argentina 🇦🇷 but after seeing some videos and pictures I had to check it out for myself. Today I am flying to Montevideo, the capital city of Uruguay 🇺🇾 on a very unique flight. Today I’ll be taking American Airlines flight 989 on their Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner tonight, this winter seasonal service is currently the ONLY direct nonstop flight between the United States 🇺🇸 and Uruguay 🇺🇾 and has quite the lore to it so stay tuned for that. I arrived at Miami International Airport at around 7pm for my 11pm departure mainly because this is around peak hour for these long haul flights with the first flights to Europe and the remaining ones to Deep South America like Brazil 🇧🇷 Argentina 🇦🇷 Chile 🇨🇱 and ours to Uruguay 🇺🇾 I have 2 bags to drop off for this trip and the line looked shorter than it really was. It took me almost 30 minutes to drop them off. Luckily, I can’t say the same for security as a TSA pre check member and was through within 5 minutes. I’m not going to search the terminal for food since we will be eating on the flight to MVD but I did head up to the Admirals Club to try and get some school work done and got myself a few things to munch on before my flight. The lounge thankfully started to clear up as soon as the first few flights to São Paulo and Buenos Aires began boarding before it was time for us to leave since not only the lounge would be closing soon but also our flight would begin boarding but I did still have to time to kill and seeing that I was going to be sitting on a plane for 8 hours straight I think it’s best to get my steps in and walk around concourse D till
boarding time.
FLIGHT INFO:
Origin: Miami Intl 🇺🇸 (KMIA)
Destination: Carrasco/Cesareo L. Berisso Intl 🇺🇾 (SUMU)
Flight Time: 8:07
Boeing 787-8 (American Airlines)
Server: Expert
Taking me tonight down to Uruguay 🇺🇾 fresh in from Philadelphia will be N801AC, Americans 2nd Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner ever delivered in February 2015 so happy 10th birthday! 🎂 and it was the one who performed the inaugural flight from Dallas Fort Worth to Chicago O’Hare and speaking of DFW, I flew this exact aircraft from here in the 305 🏝️😎to Dallas back in May of 2024 on my way to Hawaii 🏝️🐢🌺 now the minutes leading up to boarding were quite weird, the terminal was practically empty as everybody was at their departure gates, the TSA checkpoints and stores were preparing to close and it overall felt deserted especially since MIA is one of AAs busiest hubs I can’t even comprehend this just imagine and empty and silent DFW. But the weird times were soon over and it was to begin boarding the Dreamliner.
All of AAs B788s have a total 234 seats on board and tonight as we are fittingly on the their 2nd ever B788, we will have the older interior today that doesn’t mean it is anything bad however. Up in the flagship business cabin we have 20 Collins Aerospace Super Diamond seats in a 1-2-1 configuration and while not yet announced for the -8s, they are to be replaced on the longer -9s by 51 new flagship suites based on Adient Ascent Platforms. Back in premium economy where I spent the last time I was on one of AAs Dreamliner we can find 28 Collins Aerospace MiQ seats in a 2-3-2 configuration and behind that is the remaining 186 main cabins seats utilizing Collins Aerospace slimlines in the 787s standard 3-3-3 configuration with 48 of them being extra legroom main cabin extra seats. I’ll be calling seat 29A home for this 8 hour overnight flight and waiting on it was a bottle of water, pillow and blanket all I could ask American for on these type of flights. Boarding was completed quite early tonight and since the airport apart from a few later flights to a few other South American destinations was fairly quite, we had no delays on our pushback and taxi to MIAs runway 8R for take off!
Till next weekend, Miami! 🏝️😎
Despite the 787s impressive surface ceiling of 43,000ft we only climbed up to 35,000ft which was kind of lame. That does however mean the food would be coming quicker so hooray? For dinner we had the standard chicken of pasta option but in reality it was pasta with or without chicken. I chose the former which came along with some crackers and cheese, salad 🥗 bread roll with butter 🥖🧈 vanilla cake 🍰 for dessert, water bottle and choice of beverage which I chose Coke. It was pretty much what I expected from American Airlines economy long haul dinner, not terrible but not something out of this world but that vanilla cake was definitely the highlight of the meal and I did eat all of it so I can’t really complain too much I guess. Once the meal service wrapped up you would expect the lights to be dimmed so people can try and get some sleep? Not tonight, the crew went around passing out the basic snack options we’d get on short-medium haul flights like the pretzels 🥨 and biscoffs 🍪 I chose some biscoffs since I had no idea what the breakfast service would be like especially since it is often regarded as a poor offering on US airlines so once I got my cookies, I hit the hay.
I ALMOST slept pretty well except my seat mate woke me up around 5 hours to get me to take a picture of this beautiful sunrise 🌅 and normally I’d be mad if someone rudely woke me up on a flight but if it was to see a marvelous sight like this along with the equally beautiful 787 wing. How could I get mad? Anyways by this point we were overflying Bolivia 🇧🇴 and I tried to get more rest but couldn’t fall back asleep so I guess it’s time to give my seat mate payback and ask him to get up so I can head to the lavatory to get my day started and once I came back, the sun was practically already up so I went to explore what the IFE had to offer, the Thales Avant system with live TV is provided along with Viasat high speed satellite Wi-Fi which I bought for 1 hour simply because I needed to text my friend about something relating to an assignment in my travel and tourism class and while scrolling through TikTok after a came across a kind of funny video about suing Wi-Fi on a plane is Victorious core since the main character had to do that to video chat her friends about an assignment and sure enough, Victorious was available to watch and that is what I spent the remainder of the flight watching after my internet access ended.
After 3 or so episodes, the crew had commenced the breakfast service while overflying Argentina 🇦🇷 and out in the distance you can make out Paraguay 🇵🇾 along with its capital city of Asuncion. Now I didn’t have high hopes for this meal service which is primarily why I took the biscoff cookies a few hours ago and sure enough all we got was a little bag with some strawberry yogurt, granola and a fig bar along with a beverage which I chose some coffee ☕️ I easily could’ve passed on breakfast and just had the biscoff with the coffee but I wanted to make sure to eat a good sized breakfast since we were scheduled to land in Montevideo at around 10am and by the time we get out of passport control and baggage claim, it’ll probably be around 11am and breakfast wouldn’t be being served in most restaurants so I took the chance now to eat on the plane. It wasn’t that bad but not anything special either it is kinda like a small hotels free breakfast and shortly after the breakfast service wrapped up, the crew came around with immigration forms for us to fill out and show to the officers once we arrive in MVD.
After an hour so after that, we were finally flying above Uruguay 🇺🇾 and it was soon time for descent, initially we would’ve flown straight south before turning slightly over the city and coming to land on RWY 06 but unfortunately last minute wind changes made us fly past the city and airport on right downwind before turning base and landing on RWY 24. Now let’s talk about the history of this flight, let’s just say finding information about this flight was easier said than done, I looked up when this flight started but all I could see were articles about it’s resumption for the season. I recruited @Humanguy to help me uncover some information about it so thank you for that! He found out that AA 989 has history dating back to 1998 on flight aware and while this is a possibility, it could’ve started earlier or later than that since AA 989 could’ve belonged to another route before being assigned to MIA → MVD. YouTuber flyingwithfran who commonly flies this route said it has existed for around 15 years or so in 2021 which would’ve been 2006. But looking at archives of AAs destinations page on the way back machine lists Montevideo as a destination since 2005. So my best guess would be somewhere around late 1990s or early 2000s.
Anyways let’s talk about the “curse” ever since the flight started until March 2020 it has been operated with the Boeing 767-300 a very old plane which became infamous for its various maintenance issues especially in the later half of its lifespan at AA and the passenger experience also wasn’t the best especially since competitors Delta and United had fairly modern B763s, Americans were ANCIENT still lacking PTVs and plugs these issues were also presented on frans channel. The route was suspended in March of 2020 thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic which not only say AA say goodbye to their 767s but a lot of routes that heavily relied on them especially routes from Miami 🏝️😎 and Philadelphia. It might’ve looked like the end of this service but nope once the world was opening up again, this flight returned on a “newer” aircraft the Boeing 777-200ER it was actually a whole lot newer with some B763s being younger than some B772s but they are much more efficient and well maintained and for the passengers, was recently renovated which added PTVs and plugs. Than in 2021 the route was changed to the B763s primarily replacement the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner however it didn’t last long as it would be suspended once again and would now be downgraded from year round to winter seasonal. But since it was exactly terminated, it sure enough came back for the winter 2021 season and has been operating like this ever since. Now will this flight ever return to being year round? Possibly once we finally get more aircraft delivered to AA since that’s really the only roadblock as this flight is pretty popular in the VFR market and this flight went out 100% FULL!
As we begin our final approach into MVDs RWY 24 out in the distance is the city appropriately called Ciudad de la Costa which is were I’ll be staying in for the majority of my time in Uruguay 🇺🇾 until I venture out north to explore that region of the country but that won’t happen maybe until halfway into the trip, I really want to see what Montevideo and the surrounding areas have to offer first.
TOUCHDOWN! Welcome to Montevideo, Uruguay 🇺🇾 and like I was pretty much anticipating on every flight to Latin America the nonstop claps 👏 came back. And unique route aside, the flight was pretty much what I came to expect from American Airlines long haul economy in 2025. Good seats, sufficient IFE and decent food the service did impress me as these crew were really attentive even though I was pretty much at the very back of the plane and also handing out snacks to hold on for breakfast in case you didn’t like what was being offered is a big plus, 5 stars here! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I would definitely American Airlines if you plan to fly to Uruguay 🇺🇾 from the US 🇺🇸 nonstop mostly because it is the only option and while the layover would be nice, a flight on Copa Airlines through Panama City, Panama 🇵🇦 or Avianca through Bogotá, Colombia 🇨🇴 would be brutal especially since being on a narrowbody for 6 hours isn’t ideal.
Now something I found kind of strange about Carrasco International Airport is that despite being the primary airport serving the country its terminal only has 4 gates. Which I guess for now is fine since this isn’t meant to be a hub airport but if Montevideo really wants to grow on the international front, than it really has to up its gate capacity. Thankfully they have a decent amount of remote stands for aircraft who spend the day here like ours will be before flying back to Miami 🏝️😎 tonight. Passport control 🛂 did take some time especially since the officers had to review EVERYONES forms and not to mention I was at the very back of the plane. But once I got passed that I collected by 2 bags before proceeding through customs before leaving the small but beautiful terminal out to the rental car center to rent my car and make my way to the city center to eat some brunch. That will be it regarding this flight on American Airlines Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner in economy class from Miami 🏝️😎 to Montevideo, Uruguay 🇺🇾 stay tuned for the return home next Saturday and as always between now and the next time, see you in the sky! 😉👋