Azul Bumps E195-E2 Order to 75, Announces Flights to New York/JFK

This week has been hectic for Azul in Brazil. Days after announcing it reached an agreement to acquire regional carrier TwoFlex, its CEO, John Rodgerson, announced the airline increased its Embraer E195-E2 order from 51 to 75 aircraft.

The news was announced by Azul’s CEO, John Rodgerson, upon a meeting with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, and the information was reported by O Estado de São Paulo newspaper.

Azul has not officially informed the market of the order increase. The airline currently operates four units of the next-generation Embraer — the first was received in September 2019 — and expects to have 20 by the end of this year, as per the last official forecast.

Azul’s strategy is to aggressively phase-out its old Embraer 190/195-E1s replacing them with the E2s, which have a cost per seat around 26 percent lower.

Although there was no official announcement by the airline, investors received the news with optimism. Azul’s stock at São Paulo’s BVMF increased 3.21 percent the day following the news, while the airline stocks at the NYSE grew a solid 3.99 percent.

Azul Launching Flights to New York/JFK

The day before, Azul had made another big announcement; it will start flights to New York/JFK Airport. There will be daily operations operated by the Airbus A330-200 from the airline’s hub in Campinas. This will be the first U.S. destination of the airline outside Florida, starting on June 15.

“New York is the Brazilians’ apple of their eyes”, stated John Rodgerson in a press release. “With this announcement, we write another historic page in the recent trajectory of Azul. Campinas and all our domestic network, from Porto Alegre to Mossoró, will gain with the launch of this new international destination. We are very happy and excited with this new operation,” said the CEO.

Such flight was long-awaited. Upon the launch of Azul’s long-haul services in 2014, New York was one of the three outlined destinations, along with Fort Lauderdale and Orlando.

Since then, both Florida cities have daily flights of the airline, but New York was put on a hold given the strong recession Brazil entered into. Another factor that pushed the flight forward was the Brazilian real devaluation, which contained tourists from travelling abroad.

While in Campinas passengers will count with several connection options to dozens of cities in Brazil, New York will also serve as a gateway to other cities in its country. The codeshare between Azul and JetBlue will allow passengers to connect at the JFK to several cities throughout the U.S., such as Boston, Chicago, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City and Seattle.

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João Machado

João has loved aviation since he was six-years-old when he started visiting his home airport in Porto Alegre, southern Brazil. As he always loved writing, in 2011, at age 10 he started his very own aviation blog. Many things have happened since then, and now he is putting all his efforts into being an airline executive in the future. João currently lives in Siena, Italy, where he studies Economics and Management at Unisi.

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