An Aerolineas Argentinas 737-800 (Photo: Robert Underwood (LV-FQB@AEP 11AUG14) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)
In a press conference that was held at a central hotel in the city of Córdoba, Aerolineas Argentinas presented its offering of flights for the next summer season, which will consist of 4.28 million seats (3.02 million in cabotage; 867,000 in regional and 390,000 in international).
Máximo Amadeo, Commercial Director of Aerolineas Argentinas and Marcelo Cantón, Director of Corporate Affairs and Communications, who stressed that although the volume of the summer 2020 offer does not represent growth in relation to the previous season, it is an achievement to have overcome the challenge of sustaining it both because of the economic context and the lack of the five Boeing 737 MAXs that have been grounded since March.
Among the long-range routes, Miami remains the leader during the summer season with 99,088 seats and 14 weekly flights, which this year has a complement for the first time to Orlando.
In both cases, work is being done to reinforce the collection of passengers from cities such as Porto Alegre, Asunción, Curitiba, Montevideo, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, and Santiago de Chile, facilitating connection times at Ezeiza airport, with the aim of revitalizing its role as a hub of the Southern Cone. In that sense, Amadeo commented that approximately 20 percent of its passengers in that airport are in transit.
Cancun has an offer of 41,616 seats and six weekly flights from Buenos Aires, with the advantage of being the only Argentinian company that offers flights to the Caribbean using wide-body aircraft.
Punta Cana, another of the top destinations, has 30,940 seats and six weekly flights, connecting both Buenos Aires and Cordoba.
Addressing the consequences of the devaluation in the demand for international destinations, Amadeo explained that tourists do not care so much about the value of the dollar, rather than its potential fluctuations.
In that sense, Canton explained that for this season they expect a load factor in the international network close to 89 percent when last year it was around 80 percent.
The domestic network, which represents 70 percent of the offer of seats for the summer, has its most outstanding destinations Ushuaia, Mar del Plata, Salta, Tucumán, Bariloche, Córdoba, Mendoza, and Puerto Iguazú.
There are some special cases such as Ushuaia, which in recent years has seen its traffic multiply largely thanks to cruises to Antarctica, which already account for approximately 20 percent of total passengers to that city, and whose impact will be even greater after the contract signed with major cruise companies a few months ago.
Mar del Plata has also seen its air movement revamped, which will have peaks of nine daily flights during this upcoming season. There has been a change of habit in passengers who are now choosing to fly rather than driving. “The porteño -Buenos Aires resident- who used to grab the car to go to Mar del Plata is beginning to understand that it can be reached much more comfortably by plane,” Cantón concluded.
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