The competitive dynamics of the Colombian air market, increasingly dominated by the low-cost, has led Avianca to accelerate the reconfiguration of the passenger cabins of its Airbus A320s, in order to increase its capacity by up to 20% by adding more seats, which translates into an improvement in efficiency that they hope to pass on to ticket prices.
Its A320ceos have 138 seats in Economy and 12 in Business, while in front it has Viva with 188 seats per plane and LATAM, which although is traditional, flies with 180, in these two cases with a single class. The reconfiguration would thus bring the numbers closer to those of its main competitors.
«With the incorporation of this fleet and the new configuration of our aircraft, we will continue to provide our customers with more seats at more competitive prices, while at the same time we continue to advance in the expansion of the route network and a greater offer in the markets,» said Avianca Holdings vice president of the fleet, Francisco Raddatz Cárdenas.
«While customers will be able to see different seating configurations in the first phase, this will be a transitional stage as we finish unifying our final designs. We thank travelers in advance for their patience, while they accompany us in this adjustment. It is a process that will take time, but we are sure that it will be adapted to the needs of the traveler,” he added.
The reconfiguration process is estimated to end during the second half of 2022, with the first of the aircraft having already started operating on domestic routes in Colombia. In addition, another 20 aircraft that will be added to the fleet will have the new density of seats.
In principle, they assured from Avianca, the differentiation of the product will be maintained depending on the type of fare purchased by passengers under the «Fly to Your Measure» program. During the process, Business passengers could fly in planes in which that cabin has what is known as «European executive», which consists of blocking the middle seat for greater comfort, maintaining the other benefits such as access to lounges, priority access, accumulation of miles and carry more pieces of luggage.
Avianca’s single aisle fleet currently consists of 14 A319s, 38 A320ceos, 7 A320neos and 3 A321ceos.
Avianca continues to dominate the supply of domestic seats in Colombia, representing 35% of capacity (in ASK) in August, followed by LATAM with 27% and Viva with 25.6%.
But that participation is significantly lower than the 59.5% it represented five years ago, in August 2016 (followed by LATAM with 24.6% and an incipient Viva with 11.8%).
