By Juan Pedro Sanchez Zamudio
Viva Air Expects to Increase Its Operations by 40% During Easter
Viva Air, the Colombian low-cost airline, is moving swiftly through its recovery process. In March it managed to exceed the pre-school levels by 30% and expects to reach 40% by Easter this year.
The carrier’s CEO, Félix Antelo, stated to LaRepública, that Viva Air has already exceeded the pre-pandemic levels, and they expect to transport more than 148,000 passengers over the Easter period, 40% more seats than 2019 during the same period.
Between January and February, the Colombian low-cost carrier flew 85% compared to the same months in 2020, reducing 15% from the previous year; and in March 2021 compared to the same month of 2019 the carrier is flying 30% more seats.
Viva Air has already managed to grow above the pre-pandemic level. According to Antelo, 90% of the flights are domestic, which helped the carrier to have a faster recovery. In addition, the type of traffic Viva Air moves is the one that is recovering first, passengers who travel for tourism and to visit friends and family. Corporate passenger loads have not yet recovered.
The airline is expecting to transport vaccines on some domestic routes in Colombia, which would be vaccines that do not require special cooling conditions, because, for this special cargo operation, it is necessary to have a special certification. The carrier would be in a position to transport them within 30 or 60 days.
Félix Antelo indicated that they aspire to have a third part of the Colombian domestic market, between 30% and 35%, almost double what Viva Air had been bringing in pre-pandemic levels when the carrier had 18%.
Viva Air is planning to invest in Colombia, purchasing new aircraft, to maintain its prestige as the carrier with the youngest fleet in the country. The goal for the carrier is to carry out more people to fly and have high load factors. The Colombian low-cost is planning to bring 6 new planes by 2021 and increase its capacity by 20% or so.
As previously announced, Viva Air has chosen Medellín as its main hub in part because of its geographic location, as the city is located in the middle of two Latin American main hubs: Bogotá and Panama.
On this point, Félix Antelo stated “we aspire to continue growing at the Medellín airport and to connect all Colombia from there. With the new routes to Mexico City, Cancún, Orlando and Miami, we can also connect passengers coming from the north part of the American continent to Colombia and to the south, to the routes in Peru”.
Viva Air announced its alliance with Rappi, to have a new sales channel through Rappi Travel, the new alternative of the application. According to the airline, users of this platform will be able to find flights to 12 national destinations and five international ones.
According to LaRepública, this alliance reinforces the commitment that Rappi has in its travel vertical, where it offers more than 250,000 hotels worldwide and the main airlines in the world.
Since its launch in 2020, Rappi Travel has grown 10% with more than 6,000 tickets sold through the application.
The three things Juan Pedro loves most about aviation are aircraft, airports, and traveling thousands of miles in just a few hours. What he enjoys the most about aviation is that it is easier and cheaper to travel around the world and this gives you the opportunity to visit places you thought were too far away. He has traveled to different destinations in North, Central, South America and Asia. Born, raised and still living in Perú, Juan is a lawyer, soccer lover, foodie, passionate traveler, dog lover, millennial and curious by nature.
