Latest Latin America Market Survey released; insights into region’s industry trend fleet decisions examined

Airbus has just released the latest edition of its bi-annual survey on the Latin America and the Caribbean aviation market, which highlights market trends for the coming years and best practices as related to airline fleet decisions based on responses from the industry’s top airline executives and stakeholders in the region. Detailed results can be downloaded here, but following are some key highlights from this year’s survey results:

Industry Trends
A positive outlook in terms of traffic and load factors has returned following the economic crises of recent years. Respondents also highlighted a positive trend regarding yields indicating that the recovery is not necessarily being driven only by lower fares.

With key economies such as Brazil and Argentina beginning to recover, 88 percent of respondents see the regional economic recovery as a driver for growth in the region. While the overall economy is clearly the leading driver for growth in Latin America and the Caribbean, more than half of respondents see lower aircraft operating costs and lower fuel prices as key drivers as well.

According to the survey, the long-term network development opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean has shifted from intraregional connections in the 2015 edition of the survey to the opening of new long-haul routes to North America and Europe in the coming years.

The survey results also highlighted the expansion and growth in the number of Low Cost Carriers (LCCs). Reflecting this trend, 75 percent of respondents see the LCC market share growing in the future, a significant increase from the 62 percent seen only two years ago.

Fleet Decisions
As with the 2015 edition of the survey, airline criteria for selecting new aircraft include fuel burn, the ability to generate more revenues and fleet rationalization/commonality.

When evaluating a fleet scenario, there has been a marked change in the most relevant calculation airlines consider with unit cost being chosen by nearly half of respondents compared to only 13 percent in 2015. Focusing on overall profit has fallen from 60 percent to 33 percent. This could be due to the emergence of more LCCs where unit cost is the paramount driving factor for this type of business model.

Survey respondents also said the best age to replace aircraft is between eight and 12 years; this is reflected today as Latin America’s fleet is considerably younger than the world’s average.

Perception of Airbus
Once again Airbus continues to enjoy high satisfaction rates on key criteria in Latin America and the Caribbean, having increased its rating in six out of the 10 categories since the last market survey in 2015.

Airbus remains recognized by the stakeholders as a highly innovative aircraft manufacturer compared to its main competitor, offering the most integrated product range thanks to fly-by-wire technology and the commonality that it provides across the whole Airbus family, thus responding to market requirements.

For the latest Latin America and the Caribbean Market Survey, click here.

For more information please contact: 
Paul Moultrie
Head of Marketing – Airbus Latin America and the Caribbean
paul.moultrie@airbus.com