This insistence on using only land planes led to the building in 1936 of one of the country's most important airports, Congonhas, located in the city of São Paulo, far from the coast.

On 6 July 1959, VASP, Cruzeiro do Sul and Varig initiated the air shuttle services between Rio de Janeiro-Santos Dumont and São Paulo-Congonhas airports, the first of its kind in the world.

Although it had been remarkably well-run for most of its life as a state-owned company, by the 1980s VASP was being plagued by inefficiency, losses covered by state capital injections, and a bloated payroll for political reasons.

By that time, VASP had plummeted from the second to the fourth position in the Brazilian airline market, flying an aging fleet of Boeing 737s (most of them of the obsolete −200 series) and Airbus A300s.

The company faced its worst crisis in 2004 as new airlines such rise in the country, which led to the suspension of service to many Brazilian cities and the cancellation of flights.

On 27 January 2005, Brazil's then civil aviation regulator, DAC, grounded the airline from operating scheduled services pending a financial investigation.

As of October 2020, nine of the company's planes (seven Boeing 737-200s and two Airbus A300s) are still grounded at Congonhas-São Paulo Airport since 2005 and by now badly weathered and dilapidated, began to be dismantled and sold for scrap at auction.

VASP once had a much more extensive network, which covered virtually every major Brazilian city with an airport and in the 1990s included such international destinations as: Buenos Aires–Ezeiza, Quito, Miami, New York–JFK, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto–Pearson, Seoul–Gimpo, Casablanca, Barcelona, Lisbon, Brussels, Osaka–Kansai, Athens, Frankfurt and Zürich.

[8][9] The 3rd ex-VASP B737, the first operator of the legendary Boeing model in Brazil, is today at Auto Shopping Só Marcas, in the city of Contagem, almost on the border with Belo Horizonte.

With the old license plate PP-SMC, this B737-200 was manufactured in 1969 and flew exclusively on the former VASP, until the company closed, staying at Congonhas Airport for several years, until it was auctioned and bought by the owner of the shopping center and other enterprises.