Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Staley Havili - Azul Airlines Internship, Brazil

Staley Havili graduated with a B.A. in Finance from the University of Utah in December 2009 and interned with Azul Linhas Aéreas in the summer of 2010, through the Hinckley Institute of Politics. 


Azul Linhas Aéreas (Azul Airlines) Intern-Summer 2010

This summer I had the opportunity to go to South America and intern with Azul Airlines.  Azul Airlines is a domestic airline company in Brazil and its headquarters are located in Baruerí, São Paulo (in the bairro of Alphaville).  The company was founded by David Neeleman in 2008 and operated its first flights on December 15, 2008.  David Neeleman was raised in Utah and previously founded two American airline companies (Morris Air and JetBlue) before starting Azul.




I chose to intern in Brazil because I was already familiar with it, I speak the language fluently, and it is a beautiful country.  Before my internship, I spent New Year’s in Brazil in 2007 and 2010.  Each time I stayed almost a month.  I also lived there previously for two years.  The people there are nice and the food is amazing.

Because I was already acquainted with Brazil and its culture, I chose to do my internship there.  I absolutely loved my internship.  At Azul, I interned with the public relations section in the marketing department.  Within this section, we dealt with many aspects of marketing for the company.  The company is relatively new and Brazilian aviation is growing exponentially.  The majority of the Brazilians travel by bus instead of airplanes, so the market is expanding fast.  Azul, as well as several other Brazilian airline companies are trying to change the culture and get my people to travel by plane instead of bus.




Each month, Azul opens several new destinations each month.  In our department, we would have to go these new destinations and try to get the word out that Azul had arrived in that particular city.  As an intern, I would lay the groundwork before arriving in the city by contacting shopping malls, nightclubs, restaurants, radio stations, etc. to see if Azul could do an event there.  We would then fly to these cities and do events, like giving away free airline tickets at these different places.  We would also go around with promoters to give away discounts on tickets.  Besides this, we also received many proposals to sponsor certain types of events (i.e. concerts, sporting events, plays).  If required, I would travel to these events to raise awareness among those that attended these events.




Due to this internship, I was able to travel around the entire country to places I had not been to previously. That was awesome because Brazil is a very beautiful country.  On days off, you could travel as well, which meant a lot of time at the beaches.  This also meant that it got a little expensive at times.  But it was worth it.  The experience was wonderful and something I will always remember.  I am grateful for the Study Abroad Office at the University of Utah for awarding me a scholarship and helping me finance my internship this past summer.  If you have the chance to go abroad anywhere, do it because you will not regret it. 

1 comment:

  1. Everything sounds good Staley. I'm glad you got the opportunity to see more of Brazil. This is Palei, give me a call at my Mobile Number. 676 870 7787.

    'Ofa Atu
    Palei

    ReplyDelete