Argentina’s First Low-Cost Airline, Flybondi, Reaches 10 Million Passenger Milestone

Flybondi announced that yesterday, Monday (18th), it reached a new milestone in its nearly six-year history by transporting its 10 millionth passenger.

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The person who enabled the company to reach this number was Reinaldo Adrián Anonis, who was announced on board flight 5150 between Jorge Newbery Aeroparque and Corrientes and received gifts such as a model of a Flybondi airplane and free tickets.

Ayer le dimos la bienvenida a bordo a nuestro pasajero 10 millones, Reinaldo Adrian Anonis. Lo recibimos con un anuncio a bordo y muchos regalos??.

Nos encanta que sean parte de nuestra historia y que cada vez se sumen más personas a #LaLibertadDeVolar✈️. pic.twitter.com/hFtcmubYrX

— flybondi (@flybondioficial) December 19, 2023

Argentina’s first ultra low-cost airline has been demonstrating great resilience in a particularly hostile market in macroeconomic terms (which also brought operational repercussions that often affected passengers). After being left almost without airplanes during the pandemic as a consequence of the extensive halt in regular commercial aviation maintained by the previous government, it went through 2021 recovering cautiously to end 2022 surpassing pre-pandemic traffic and almost tripling it in 2023.

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Passenger traffic – 2018 to 2023 (Jan-Nov), domestic and international

Load factor – 2018 to 2023 (Jan-Nov), domestic

Its fleet, which as we mentioned, was almost decimated during the pandemic, grew to 15 Boeing 737-800 aircraft today. The number of employees also increased to around 1,500 people.

This allowed it to take advantage of the space left by other companies like Norwegian and LATAM and increase its market share from 6% in 2018 to 21% by 2023 (considering the period from January to November).

Domestic market share – 2018 to 2023 (Jan-Nov)

The destination network also expanded from the one in January 2018, which included only Córdoba, Puerto Iguazú, Mendoza, and Bariloche, to the current network covering 18 cities in Argentina (in addition to those already mentioned, Buenos Aires, Comodoro Rivadavia, Corrientes, El Calafate, Jujuy, Mar del Plata, Neuquén, Salta, Santiago del Estero, Posadas, Puerto Madryn, Tucumán, Trelew, and Ushuaia) and 3 in Brazil (Florianópolis, Rio de Janeiro, and Sao Paulo).

This year Flybondi also achieved milestones such as being the first airline in the world to launch transferable tickets and create a resale marketplace in association with TravelX, and announce its plans to list on the NASDAQ stock exchange.

Remembering the First Flight

Aviacionline had been the only specialized media to participate in Flybondi’s first regular flight on January 26, 2018, which connected Córdoba with Puerto Iguazú.

This video shows our report from that historic day when the low-cost model landed in Argentine domestic flights: