Mexico’s State-Owned Airline Scheduled for Takeoff In December

Mexico City — Mexicana de Aviación, the new Mexican state-owned airline, will begin operations on the first Saturday of December, and has activated a webpage for flight reservations to 20 destinations, with Mexico City’s Felipe Angeles International Airport (AIFA) as its hub.

Flights will begin on Saturday, December 2 with 10 Boeing 787-800 aircraft, which will be leased along with their crew, according to Luis Crescencio Sandoval, Mexico’s defense minister.

“It will be a quality service at an affordable cost,” Sandoval said. “The company is viable, as the national airport infrastructure will guarantee its operation.”

Mexicana de Aviación, which required an investment o 4 billion pesos, will offer tickets at an 18% to 20% lower cost compared to other options in the market, according to Sandoval. The airline will not charge for seat allocation and a checked baggage allowance of up to 15 kilos.

Mexicana de Aviacion will fly to Cancún, Monterrey, Guadalajara, Tijuana, Campeche, Chetumal, Mérida, Puerto Vallarta, Cozumel, Ixtapa Zihuatanejo, Los Cabos, Hermosillo, Ciudad Juárez, Villahermosa, Huatulco, Oaxaca, Mazatlán, La Paz and León.

The airplanes will have a capacity to transport 180 passengers and there will be only one class.

The Mexican Army was advised by Boeing on the business plan, and on obtaining an airline operator’s certificate.

The profitability of the state-owned company will depend on the company’s flight activity, Sandoval added.

Private airlines increase their presence in AIFA

Mexico City’s new airport, AIFA, and which was developed from a former military aerodrome on the initiative of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador following his cancellation of a project launched by the previous government to build a $14 billion airport designed by Sir Norman Foster, has now attracted more airlines, with Aeromexico and Viva Aerobus saying in recent weeks they plan to increase their operations there.

Viva Aerobus will open 17 destinations from that terminal next year, as well as an increase in frequencies in the services of the 10 routes it already serves, turning AIFA into a strategic hub in the central region of the country.

“This means that the airline will quintuple its capacity at AIFA in the summer of 2024, compared to 2023″, the airline said in a September 28 statement.

Aeromexico will begin flying from that airport to the Texan cities of McAllen and Dallas/Fort Worth.

Those flights will be in addition to growth plans unveiled in early September in which Aeromexico will have more than 1,000 flights per month in and out of AIFA, starting in October.

This will represent a 40% growth in operations at the terminal, which opened in March 2022.