Mexican airline industry is heating up. In March this year new airline Volaris is going to start flying in mexican skyes with its hub in Toluca TLC (just a few kilometers from Mexico City). Its going to have an all Airbus A319 fleet (they have 16 on order) with 84Xflights / week.
Hi hakan. Indeed, it is going to be a low cost operator. For many years we only had two options in Mexico: Mexicana and Aeromexico. Both good, but since they both were goverment owned (MX has just been privatized) there was no competition and fares were very high.
Right now we have several airlines and competition its getting harder. To give you an idea on fares you get to fly from MTY to MEX (1 hour flight) with AM or MX for $485 USD round trip and with Aviacsa for around $300 USD. Volaris and Interjet won't fly to MEX, they will fly to Toluca (1 to 1 and a half hour driving to Mexico City) for something like $ 160-200 USD round trip.
AM is responding with RJ-145 flights to TLC with its subsidiary Aerolitoral, but I don't think the can compete with the A319, specially if the service is good; although I could be wrong, because we mexicans tend to be loyal to brands if the price is right.
This is going to be a very interesting year for commercial aviation in Mexico.
OOh God, the prices quoted and charged for 1 hour flight are astronomical. I really hope this new LCC will bring down all prices. The Mexican passengers also deserve reasonable prices. So more of them could enjoy of flying instead of travelling by road as Mexico is a big country to travel from one end to another.
You can tell me about it, most of the times prices are really insane and travelling by road could be really, really annoying, not to mention the time involved. I wish Volaris, and the rest of our carriers luck. I'm sure that prices will be lower and hope air travel be available to more people.
Regards,
JAHC
Having lived in Mexico for a few months, I can confirm internal flights are quite expensive but whe are slowly seeing low cost airlines. Here is a short summary of the main existing low cost airlines. Mexico is definitely maturing in the low cost market and Toluca airport is also the destination used by Air Madrid as an alternative to Juarez Int'l airport
Aviacsa
- fly all over Mexico and have a fleet of 23 737-200's (and 5 727's) and offer better rates than AM and MX: http://www.aviacsa.com/splash.cfm
AeroCalifornia
is another airline which operates DC-9's! They are probably the cheapest but operate really old noisy planes mostly from the western coast of Mexico. They also fly to LAX
Does anyone know what is happening with Mexus (low-cost airline flying between Mex and US, supposed to bring prices tumbling with amazing fares)?
Sorry for the confusion. Toluca is about 70 Kms from Mexico City. It's not much considering that Mexico is a big country. And traffic jams........you don't want to be in one in our capital city, they get pretty bad. Also, Mexico City is pretty big, so time will depend on where exactly you are going into the city. Anyway, considering that you are going to save a couple hundred USD, I believe flying to TLC is worth it.
Regards,
JAHC
Regarding Toluca:
It will also be used by Air Madrid for their flights to from Spain to Mexico
Regarding LCC in Mexico indeed they are very badly needed and it had been rumored that GOL (Brazils' very succedful LCC) was in negotiation with some mexican partners to start operations in Mexico
You are correct andong. At the moment, GOL and its partners in Mexico are negotiating with the goverment and they expect to start the third quarter of this year. I posted a link a couple days ago: "Mexican market uprising" in this same forum.
Regards,
JAHC
I don't think soy Captain, both were owned by the goverment and, in fact, they were not really competing. Now Mexicana was sold to Grupo Posadas and Aeroméxico is still in sale. We don't know what is going to happen. I think we will have to wait a couple of months before we know something.
Regards,
JAHC
