Q TRAVEL – The low-cost airline, Volaris Costa Rica, a subsidiary of the Mexican Volaris, requested authorization from the Civil Aviation (Dirección Nacional de Aviación Civil) to fly between the Juan Santamaría or San Jose airport and Bogot and Medellin in Colombia.
The data on the procedures in Colombia was published by the portal aviaciononline.com, as part of a group of requests from the company to enter that South American country.
The process also includes flights from Mexico City and Cancun, through the parent company.
The case will be evaluated by the Colombian aeronautical authority on February 25.
In Costa Rica, the request was confirmed by Álvaro Vargas, director of Civil Aviation.
“Once the airline makes the request, the document verification process begins, as well as the technical and financial capacity. With this evaluation, the procedure is approved or not,” explained Vargas.
The press department of Volaris, in Mexico City, declined to comment on the new routes, because the company is listed on the stock market and that prevents it from making projections about its operation, before the data is official or until its publication financial statements, at the end of February.
From Costa Rica, the Colombian airlines Avianca and Wingo (Aero República) operate routes to Bogotá.
However, Volaris would be the only one with a direct flight between Costa Rica and Medellín.
The requested flights would three times a week to Bogotá and twice a week to Medellín.
In Mexico, Viva Aerobús, another low-cost airline, also applied to Colombia, looking to fly daily between Mexico City and Bogotá.
The attractiveness of Colombia for Volaris and Viva Aerobús would be a response to the cessation of flights Interjet, which left a gap in the market due to the coronavirus crisis, and whose reactivation is still uncertain.
The Mexican business and finance portal Expansion.mx stated that the traveler market between Mexico and Colombia had exceeded 1.5 million at the end of 2019. Interjet had a share of around 40%.
