TRAVEL to Latin America has been on the upswing as countries there look to tourism for economic growth, and tour operators in the United States and Canada offer exotic vacations to the south. But until recently, getting around within Latin America — even in popular countries like Mexico — was a hassle often involving multiple plane changes or long bus rides over rough roads.

Now, thanks to an increase in low-cost airlines in Brazil and Mexico, which account for 60 percent of the Latin America’s air traffic, it’s getting easier to jet around.

In the last two years, at least five new low-cost carriers, including Click Mexicana, InterJet and Volaris, have started service in Mexico, according to ALTA, the Latin American Air Transport Association. And the low-cost airlines GOL Linhas Aéreas Inteligentes, BRA and WebJet now account for more than 40 percent of Brazil’s domestic market.

Even some budget carriers from the United States have begun expanding to Latin America. Spirit Airlines started service to San Jose, Costa Rica, on April 5 and plans to serve Guatemala City from Fort Lauderdale and Los Angeles starting May 10 and 11 respectively. It also has filed for service to Caracas, Venezuela, and to Lima and Chiclayo in Peru.

JetBlue, which flies to Cancún, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, hasn’t yet announced plans for other routes to Latin America, but Sebastian White, a spokesman, said in an e-mail message that the airline is “constantly evaluating new routes,” and Latin America “is certainly an attractive market.”

In Mexico, said Alex de Gunten, executive director of ALTA, “the typical joke about two years ago was that everybody and their mother was starting a low-cost carrier.” The jump in budget airlines, he said, “has meant more competition in a number of routes and translated to better deals for U.S. consumers.”

Volaris, for example, has been advertising one-way domestic fares on its Web site, www.volaris.com.mx, at prices as low as 769 Mexican pesos, or about $70 at 11 pesos to $1, between Toluca Airport, 40 miles from Mexico City, and Aguacalientes from April 16 to May 13 (for the San Marcos National Fair) and 250 pesos between Puebla and Tijuana from May 18 to June 18. Alma de México, which flies to 13 destinations in Mexico, has been advertising flights between San José del Cabo and Guadalajara for 1,324 pesos at www.alma.com.mx. And a recent search on Click Mexicana’s Web site, www.clickmx.com, for flights in May from Mexico City to tourist cities like Mérida and Zihuatanejo, turned up one-way fares from 1,085 and 1,049 pesos, with taxes and fees.

There are also new direct flights replacing connections that previously required stops or plane changes. For example, vacationers planning to sightsee in Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city, and then hit the sand in Cancún, used to have to stop in Mexico City. Now Click, a subsidiary of Mexicana Airlines, which advertises leather seats with 35 inches of legroom as Coach Plus, flies nonstop between Guadalajara and Cancún.

The new nonstop routes “make it very attractive to travelers coming from cities, that otherwise would require a very long trip, to come to Cancún,” said Arturo Escaip Manzur, chief executive of the Cancún Convention and Visitors Bureau, which attributes an increase in domestic travelers to new direct flights from budget airlines and plans to promote the routes in marketing campaigns. “A stop in Mexico City,” he said, “might make them choose another location.”

Ben Gritzewsky, a travel agent who specializes in Mexico at Frosch Vacations in Houston, said he tended to book with major national airlines like Aeroméxico or Mexicana because of their mileage program partnerships and ease of booking, but also noted that there were a few routes between second- and third-tier cities that the larger carriers don’t cover. “For Southern California residents,” he said, “it may be advantageous to use Avolar’s Tijuana gateway occasionally in order to fly directly into the interior.” Toluca, he added, which Volaris and InterJet both fly from, “is an alternative if you are in far west Mexico City and want to avoid the big airport or crosstown traffic.”

Like most low-cost carriers in the United States, the Latin American budget airlines are generally of the no-frills variety, offering a single class of seats, serving snacks instead of meals, and keeping costs down with low maintenance and high efficiency.

Booking can be a challenge if you don’t speak Spanish. Only a few have agreements with companies like Worldspan and Sabre, which distribute fare information to United States travel agents or familiar discount Web sites like Expedia. And since their business is primarily geared toward domestic travelers, few offer their own Web sites in English or take American Express credit cards. Volaris, which offers flights to 14 destinations in Mexico including Cancún, Los Cabos and Morelia, is one of the few that does both. Gol Linhas Aéreas Inteligentes, which serves 49 destinations in Brazil and also flies to Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile and Peru, also offers booking in English (www.voegol.com.br). Outside Brazil, it accepts only American Express cards or, at a ticket counter, cash.

The Latin American carriers are regulated by civil aviation authorities in their own countries. “They’ve been very strict,” said Alex de Gunten, of the Latin American Air Transport Association, in enforcing their regulations. Last month the Mexican government suspended operations of the low-cost carrier Lineas Aéreas Azteca because it failed to comply with safety, administrative and technical rules, the Associated Press reported. Azteca, which has 90 days to correct the problems, is the second low-cost carrier to be grounded by the government in the last year. Aero California was suspended last April for failing to meet safety standards. It corrected its violations and has resumed some flights.

Last fall, a Boeing 737 operated by Gol crashed in the Amazon, killing all 154 people aboard. Investigations of the crash, which is believed to have been caused by a collision with a small business jet, are continuing.

As low-cost carriers continue to take off in Latin America, they are gaining a greater share of the overall market. In the fourth quarter of 2006, Gol accounted for more than a third of the Brazilian air market. At the end of March, the company bought Varig, once Brazil’s largest airline.

But as the low-cost carriers grow, the boundaries between them and older airlines are blurring. “Gol entered the market strong and with this idea of low cost,” said Augusto Simas, managing director at Travel Place, a travel agency in Rio de Janeiro. But as the company expanded, he said, its prices went up slightly, and its competitors’ prices went down a little bit. “Now,” he said, “they’re kind of balanced.”