Volaris celebrates a record-‐breaking fourteenth anniversary, positioning itself as Mexico’s fastest
growing airline.
In 2019, the company transported 22 million passengers, an increase of 19.5 percentover the previous year, becoming the largest ultra-‐low-‐cost carrier in Latin America and the largest domestic passenger operator in Mexico, 35 percentabove its closest competitor in terms of domestic traffic and 6 percenthigher in total.
In fact, last year Volaris transported the largest number of domestic passengers in the history of the country and added 40 new destinations.
Volaris was able to respond successfully to challenges in the travel industry in 2019 because of its cost reduction strategy, which is the cornerstone of its ultra-‐low-‐cost business model.
Volaris’ operating costs were so low in 2019 that fuel represented 38 percent of total costs. New aircraft and engine technology are the key to managing fuel costs and, by March 2020, Volaris’ young fleet consisted of 82 aircraft with an average age of 4.9 years, an average of 187 seats and the eco-‐friendly NEOs made up 28 percent of the fleet.
The airline’s cost reduction strategy is complemented by its point-‐to-‐point network that is not dependent on the Mexico City airport, with only 14 percentof total seats currently from Mexico City. The result is that Volaris is now the second lowest unit cost operator in the world, and the lowest on the continent and in the Western Hemisphere.
Cost reduction is not just paramount to weathering the challenging political and economic factors facing the industry, but also in honoring the Volaris promise that “everybody can fly”. In 2019 the airline increased passengers by 19.5 percent and, significantly, 6-‐ 8 percentof passengers still claim to be first time flyers. One quarter of Volaris passengers still research bus fares before purchasing tickets with Volaris, meaning that Volaris is ableto compete successfully against bus travel.
In fact, on 41 percentof Volaris routes, it is the only airline competing against buses. Volaris is able to continue to compete against buses by offering its clean, transparent lowfares, which allow people to pay only for what they need and thus, services are bought separately so that the base fare remains low.
“Our core markets are Los Angeles, the Bay Area, Chicago and Texas, but we do offer many more routes. In fact, we are the Latin American carrier with the most destinations in the United States. Additionally, our customers are connected to even more destinations though our codeshare agreement with Frontier, which is the first agreement of its kind between low cost carriers” said Carolyn Prowse, Volaris’ chief commercial officer.
