Mexico City, Mexico — After five weeks of flying the new AIFA-Villahermosa route, Aeromexico has announced a cut in flights due to low demand. The airline says that each flight averaged only 20 passengers.
Aeromexico inaugurated AIFA with a flight to Villahermosa after saying earlier in the year that it would not fly from the new airport in Santa Lucia.
In 22 flights made on that route, Aeromexico only counted 443 passengers, an average of 20 per flight. On return flights back to Santa Lucia from Villahermosa, the airline averaged 18 passengers.
Since Aeromexico’s announcement to cut back flights, President López Obrador has asked three airlines, one of which is Aeromexico, to increase flights into the new airport.
On Wednesday, AMLO requested that Aeromexico, Viva Aerobus and Volaris increase their domestic flights at the new air base. He said the government is hoping to attract more airlines and open a greater number of flights at the Santa Lucía airport.
Eduardo Tricio, the president of Aeromexico said in a conversation with López Obrador, he was asked to expand flights to Puerto Vallarta as well as solve the frequency cut of the AIFA-Villahermosa-AIFA flight due to the low influx of passengers.
López Obrador has made similar requests from the directors of Viva Aerobus and Volaris even though the Secretary of Communications and Transportation, Jorge Arganis Díaz or the Secretary of the Interior, Adán Augusto López, are in charge of requesting airline presence increases at Santa Lucía.
“We are going to ensure that more lines arrive, that there are more flights. We are also looking for more flights to Toluca. We already have the infrastructure that is required, a problem that we inherited has already been solved, now we need to complement things,” said the president.
To date, Aeroméxico has two open destinations to Mérida and Puerto Vallarta. The second replaced the route to Villahermosa after low passenger demand.
Volaris operates the routes from AIFA to Cancun and Tijuana, the Cancun route being the busiest with 3,657 passengers in five weeks. The Tijuana route has served 3,323 travelers during the same period.
Viva Aerobus handles destinations to Guadalajara and Monterrey, which counted 1,726 and 3,064 passengers respectively during the month of March.
