There is a new low-cost in town

VivaColombia to take-off in 2012 with the A320

There is a new airline in town. The town is Medellin and the airline is VivaColombia. The new airline will follow a low-cost carrier strategy and will start operations in May 2012 with an initial leased fleet of five A320 CFM powered aircraft and a fleet plan that foresees adding 20 more aircraft in the coming years.

The project has been in the works for some time led by former Avianca’s CEO Juan Emilio Posadas and backed by aviation professionals including Frederik Jacobsen (CEO), Gabriel Migowski (CFO) and William Shaw (CCO) among others, but it was not officially launched until March this year. And it wasn’t until very recently that VivaColombia revealed their aircraft choice after a very exhaustive selection process. The chosen A320 has the widest and most comfortable cabin of any single-aisle aircraft and will feature an all-single class cabin of 180 seats and the lowest CASKs, an essential advantage needed to support VivaColombia’s strategy.

The airline will cover thin-traffic routes in Colombia, which are either served today by turboprops or not served at all, and will take advantage of a growing Colombian middle-class that aims to travel more and more by air. VivaColombia’s launch is validated by Colombia’s growing traffic statistics. The country’s air travel grew more than 30 percent between 2009 and 2010, while domestic traffic grew almost 80 percent in the past 10 years.

Colombia is among the top three most important markets in terms of size for Airbus in Latin America, after Brazil and Mexico. Airbus is happy to welcome a new airline to Latin America’s busy skies and proud to have been selected as VivaColombia’s aircraft manufacturer. We wish VivaColombia a very happy take-off!

For more information contact:
Amaya Rodriguez Gonzalez
Director Airline Marketing, Latin America & Caribbean
amaya.rodriguez-gonzalez@airbus.com