Late last month in Argentina the national aviation regulator, ANAC, announced that they were in talks to advance bilateral agreements with Morocco. This, they said, could eventually develop into a nonstop flight between Buenos Aires and Casablanca.
🇲🇦 Marruecos más cerca 🇦🇷
✅ 👥 @ANACargentina mantuvo una reunión con el Embajador del Reino de Marruecos, Fares Yassir, para avanzar en la negociación de las cláusulas pendientes del Acuerdo Bilateral de Servicios Aéreos con dicho país. 🌏 pic.twitter.com/BTojLwBGXR
— ANAC (@ANACargentina) November 29, 2022
Yet some people were wondering: would a flight like this actually be feasible? The reasons for that thinking are quite straightforward; here are two nations with seemingly very few ties, one of which is in huge economical turmoil as of late… yet, the answer could actually point the other way. Yes, a flight between Buenos Aires and Casablanca could work.
Royal Air Maroc and its connectivity
The third-largest airline in Africa after Ethiopian and EgyptAir, Royal Air Maroc (RAM), the state-owned carrier based in Casablanca, has long wanted to become a major connector, benefitting from its privileged location, right in the middle of the way between the Americas, Europe, Africa and, to some lesser extent, even Asia.
Prior to the pandemic, the airline, according to the little data available, was marginally profitable, and it even served, in Latin America, São Paulo/Guarulhos and Rio de Janeiro/Galeão.
The airline’s pitch was to offer passengers an economical solution between the continents, and for many budget customers in Brazil, that was an option that worked.
And what’s best, Royal Air Maroc even offered (it still does, in fact) a stopover option in Casablanca, which included a complimentary hotel room subject to availability.
For the State of Morocco, the largest shareholder in RAM, that brings an interesting segment of tourism, which is why, since the beggining of the flights to Brazil, the number of Brazilian tourists in Morocco grew by 400%, according to a 2019 report by ANBA news agency.
Flying with Royal Air Maroc
While the first years of the route had a subpar service with RAM’s outdated Boeing 767-300s, things got much better with the entry of the 787 Dreamliner (photos below) in the airline’s fleet.
The connecting flights from Morocco to Europe were then largely done with narrowbodies, usually the 737-800 or the Embraer E190.
With the pandemic, further growth plans were brought to a halt. The flights to Brazil, in fact, have not yet been resumed, although there are plans, by Royal Air Maroc, to do so in the first half of next year, according to a report by Aeroin back in October.
The Casablanca hub today
Cirium’s Diio Mi application can show us, more or less, what connectivity we are talking about. If we take a hub snaphot from December 21, 2022, these are the connections RAM offers in Casablanca. Note that there are some misconnections, as a good chunk of outbound flights starts departing before all arriving flights land.
But that’s in some sense a good catch for those who have time in their itneraries, so they can book a long layover and, depending on availability, take a day stay in the hotel and maybe even know Casablanca.
In the map below, the inbound routes in the South-North bank are displayed in navy blue, with the outbound connections displayed in red. It’s important to add that there are some connections here that do not appear because they do not operate on the day we have selected, such as Miami.
Or better yet to what we are discussing (a potential Buenos Aires-Casablanca flight), below are the outbound connections:
With this amount of European connections on offer in the outbound sectors, it would not be a stretch to say that a flight from Buenos Aires to Casablanca could work. Nevermind at the right price point (which is where Royal Air Maroc tended to focus on the flights from Brazil).
The point here is that, in these long-haul segments for Royal Air Maroc, what counts the demand there is between the city in Latin America and the European final destination — not the demand between the Latin city and Casablanca, which in any event should be very low. Rather, the latter comes as a residual consequence of these flights — just see the huge inflow traffic of Brazilian tourists once RAM started the routes to Rio and São Paulo.
Finally, we don’t think the political considerations that surround a state-owned airline would affect the decision between flying or not flying to Buenos Aires. First, the Moroccan government is not in the best budgetary position in order to fund a loss-making airline, but secondly and most important, the bilateral relations between Argentina and Morocco are almos negligible anyway.
Going further yet…
By the way, Royal Air Maroc’s narrowbody fleet is also composed by the Boeing 737 MAX 8. In theory, the aircraft has the range to reach, from Casablanca, all capitals of Northeastern Brazil, doing what Cabo Verde Airlines intended to before the pandemic hit.
Because the 737 is way smaller than the 787, it would be easier, in theory, to fill the plane in a Fortaleza-Casablanca-Paris or a Recife-Casablanca-Rome. And that geographical advantage is one of the greatest assets RAM has.
So I would not be surprised at the least if the airline came up with direct connections to Northeastern Brazil in the medium-term. But that, for now, is mere speculation — and a topic for another write-up!
