According to Agencia Boliviana de Información (ABI), Ronald Casso, Manager of the state-owned company Boliviana de Aviación (BoA), announced that two new aircraft will be acquired for 2022 and the long-range fleet will be renewed to improve its services.
According to Casso, the two aircraft are already confirmed and will be received between February and March. In addition, he said that by the second half of the year the Boeing 767-300ERs will be replaced by a more modern aircraft, without specifying the model or manufacturer.
BoA’s purpose is to initiate a fleet renewal process to improve service, punctuality, and environmental standards. According to Ch-Aviation, it has a fleet of nine Boeing 737-300s, four Boeing 737-700s and four Boeing 737-800s for domestic and regional routes; two Bombardier CRJ 200s for low-density domestic routes and four Boeing 767-300ERs for flights to Madrid (MAD), Buenos Aires (EZE) and Miami (MIA), totaling 23 aircraft.
BoA’s average fleet is 21.9 years old, with the Boeing 737-300 and Boeing 767 being the longest-lived, exactly the models that will be retired very soon. In 2010 the Bolivian government stipulated that aircraft over twenty-five years old could not be operated.
Expansion plans in the destination network
Casso also informed that this year flights to Lima, Peru will be inaugurated in February and that flights to the Caribbean are also planned for the future.
«We have already prepared the inauguration to Lima, which we expect to do in the month of February. We are finalizing the details of the necessary technical aspects, certification, and all the components we need. We already have the regional office in Lima set up and then we will consider some other routes to the Caribbean, mainly; we also have some studies and we hope that this will become a reality during 2022», he said.
In 2019 the airline operated between Santa Cruz de la Sierra and Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, with a weekly flight, carrying 2,958 passengers. They were also studying a direct connection to Cuba.
«We concluded the year with a higher operational rhythm than in 2019, approximately five percent above that year’s rates and that motivates us to continue growing,» Casso indicated.
The airline’s international destination offer is made up of flights to Buenos Aires/Ezeiza (EZE), Argentina; São Paulo (GRU), Brazil; Miami (MIA), United States; Madrid (MAD), Spain and, as of February 8, Lima (LIM), Peru.
BoA is the main airline in the domestic market and operates the following routes:
- To and from Cochabamba (CBB): La Paz (LPB), Oruro (ORU), Potosí (POI), Sucre (SRE), Tarija (TJA), Trinidad (TDD), Uyuni (UYU) and Yacuiba (BYC).
- To and from Santa Cruz de la Sierra (VVI): Cochabamba (CBB), La Paz (LPB), Oruro (ORU), Sucre (SRE) and Tarija (TJA).
- To and from La Paz (LPB): Cobija (CIJ), Sucre (SRE), Tarija (TJA), Trinidad (TDD) and Uyuni (UYU).
- To and from Tarija (TJA): Yacuiba (BYC).
- To and from Sucre (SRE): Tarija (TJA).
