In the context of his morning press conference, Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced today that they will purchase 20 planes for the recently established state-owned airline Mexicana de Aviación.
«We are going to buy 20 planes before we finish, 20 planes,» said the president, and added, true to his style, «this so our opponents can enjoy their breakfast,» considering the criticisms that the project to relaunch Mexicana stirred up, not only among his political adversaries but also within much of the local and international commercial aviation industry. AMLO’s term will end on September 30, 2024.
Announced a couple of years ago and after undergoing a certification process not without controversy, the brand Mexicana de Aviación returned to the Mexican skies in December 2023 after 13 years since the original company’s closure as one of the oldest airlines in Latin America.
When the project was officially presented in August, AMLO had assured that Mexicana de Aviación would operate with ten Boeing 737-800s with a capacity for 180 passengers to operate a network of 20 destinations, but as the timings of politics are different from those of the industry, the state company started using three aircraft of the same model provided by the Mexican Air Force and two Embraer ERJ 145s wet-leased from TAR Aerolíneas that operate under the Mexicana Link brand.
According to the latest report from the Federal Civil Aviation Agency (AFAC), during January 2024, the first full month of Mexicana de Aviación operations, 12,504 passengers were transported registering an average load factor of 49.7%. This allowed it to capture 0.26% of Mexico’s domestic market, which is led by Volaris with 38%, followed by VivaAerobus and Aeromexico with 35% and 27% respectively.
Where does Mexicana de Aviación fly?
Eight of the destinations are operated with the 737NG fleet with a capacity for 180 passengers:
- Campeche (2 weekly flights), Chetumal (6 weekly flights), Mazatlán (3 weekly flights), Mérida (3 weekly flights), Monterrey (2 weekly flights), Puerto Vallarta (2 weekly flights), Tijuana (3 weekly flights), and Tulum (6 weekly flights).
While Mexicana Link, with its ERJ145s for 50 passengers, operates to:
- Acapulco (6 weekly flights), Ciudad Victoria (3 weekly flights), Ixtepec (3 weekly flights), Guadalajara (5 weekly flights), Nuevo Laredo (3 weekly flights), Palenque (4 weekly flights), Uruapan (3 weekly flights), Villahermosa (7 weekly flights), and Zihuatanejo (6 weekly flights).
And the new planes?
Although in his conference today AMLO did not go into details about which models will finally be the new planes for Mexicana de Aviación, a couple of weeks ago it was known that a government delegation traveled to Brazil to negotiate with Embraer the acquisition of 10 E-Jets aircraft with deliveries starting from May 2025, whose capacity of between 100 and 132 seats seems more appropriate for many of the routes that the state company operates.
