Route brief · WAS → RIO
Washington → Rio de Janeiro
$664
−8% vs typical
seasonal median $725 · difference $61
Jan 8 '27 – Jan 12 '27 · 4 nights
Copa Airlines1 stop
- Usual monthly lows
- $719–$723
- Board rank
- Stronger than 14%
- Route sample
- 4 observed months
Cached fare — the booking search re-prices live before you pay.
Destination briefRIORio de JaneiroBeaches with mountains growing out of them. Fares south swing hard — we catch the dips.Best windowApr–Jun · Sep–OctAirportsGaleão (GIG) · Santos Dumont (SDU)All routes into Rio de JaneiroWhen this route gets cheap.
Cached-fare history: across 4 months, Jan is the cheapest for WAS → RIO. Best time to be there: Apr–Jun · Sep–Oct.
Fares bottom out in January around $664 and peak in September near $825 — a $161 spread across the 4 months we track. The cheapest itinerary we are tracking makes one stop and takes about 12 hours outbound, on a 4-night trip — ticketed under Copa Airlines, which on a connecting fare need not operate every leg. At $664 for 7,723 km each way, that works out to about $43 per 1,000 km flown. That is about the $44 typical of long-haul fares here. Across the 22 departure cities we track at a similar distance from Rio de Janeiro, this fare ranks 6th — 51% above the $439 from Boston. That puts it in the cheaper half of the 32 routes of similar length we watch out of Washington, where the middle fare is $690.
The 4 days we hold a cached fare for
Tap a date → live search
The median cached fare across this calendar is 5% lower than when tracking began on Aug 8 — $759 then versus $721 now, across 5 recorded snapshots. This is a calendar-level trend, so an individual deal above can be lower. The lowest single day we have seen here is $688, on Oct 7.
These are the only days we have a cached price for on this route so far — not the only days it flies. The search above covers any date.
Cheapest in Jan · around $664
8% below the $725 typical fare
Cheapest round-trip fare found per month · Washington → Rio de Janeiro · cached-price history
Route facts
- Airports
- Dulles (IAD) · Reagan National (DCA) · Baltimore (BWI) ↔ Galeão (GIG) · Santos Dumont (SDU)
- Flight time
- ~12 hours outbound
- Distance
- ~7,723 km each way
- Typical price
- $725 round-trip (seasonal median)
- Airlines on the board
- Copa Airlines
- Itineraries
- Connections on current fares
- Best months to visit
- Apr–Jun · Sep–Oct
WAS → RIO, answered.
Is $664 a good price for Washington to Rio de Janeiro?
Only slightly. The seasonal median is around $725 round-trip and this fare is 8% under it, about $61. We do not call a drop notable until 20%, so this is an ordinary price for the route rather than a reason to hurry.
What is the cheapest month to fly from Washington to Rio de Janeiro?
Across 4 months of cached-fare history, Jan comes out cheapest on this route. The best months to actually be in Rio de Janeiro are Apr–Jun · Sep–Oct — when those overlap, that's your window.
How far in advance should I book WAS → Rio de Janeiro?
We do not publish a number for this, because we cannot measure it yet. Answering it honestly means watching the same departure date on this route over many weeks as it approaches, and that archive is still filling up — so any "book N days ahead" figure here would be borrowed from somewhere else rather than measured. What we can measure is which month is cheap: across 4 months of cached fares, Jan comes out lowest on this route. See /guides/what-moves-a-flight-price/ for what does move a fare.
Are there nonstop flights from Washington to Rio de Janeiro?
The current cheapest fares involve a connection, ticketed under Copa Airlines. Nonstop options exist on many dates at higher prices — check the live search for your exact dates.
Are these prices guaranteed?
No — these are cached fares found on real searches (this one on September 1). Airlines reprice constantly, so the booking search re-checks the live price before you pay. Fresher finds are far more likely to still be available.
Next step
Sleeping in Rio de Janeiro?
Lock the flight first — then compare stays for Jan 8 '27 – Jan 12 '27 · 4 nights.
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Missed it?
Cached fares expire. This route has a feed of its own — follow it and the next WAS → RIO drop reaches you as soon as we find it.
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