If you were counting on Arajet to get you from San José to Santo Domingo this month, you will need another plan. The Dominican low-cost carrier has not flown to Costa Rica since 8 August, and it has no flights scheduled here for the rest of September. The route comes back on 3 November. Seats from that date onward are already on sale, and the airline’s own booking page is quoting one-way fares from $119 to Santo Domingo across November, December and January.
So this is a pause rather than a departure. It is a long one, though, and it lands in the months when a lot of regional travel gets booked. Arajet started flying San José to Santo Domingo on 10 October 2022, opening with four weekly departures. By the first days of this August it was down to three flights a week. Then it stopped. The airline has not publicly explained why.
What makes the gap matter more than one missing destination is what the route was actually used for. Santo Domingo is Arajet’s hub, and the San José connection let travellers reach the rest of the Caribbean and a long list of South American cities on a single low-cost ticket with one change of planes.
Take that away for close to three months and those trips get more expensive. You are looking at rerouting through Panama City, Bogotá or San Salvador on a full-service carrier, or stitching together two separate tickets. The second option also means you carry the risk yourself if the first flight runs late.
If you already hold a booking on a September or October flight, contact the airline directly rather than waiting to hear from it. When a carrier cancels, the options are usually a refund or a rebooking, but which one you actually get often depends on how early you ask. If you are still planning the trip, price the November restart against what is available now before you commit. A fare at $119 one way in November can beat a September itinerary built from two tickets you have to buy separately.
Check the schedule again before booking anything for late October. The 3 November date comes from the tourism institute’s flight-connectivity records, while Arajet’s own site is currently selling from the start of that month rather than a specific day. Restart dates move.
Costa Rica has non-stop service to 34 cities in 15 countries from San Jose and Liberia and is not short of air connections but it is short of cheap ones, and Arajet was among the cheapest.
