Arajet, Founder and CEO, Víctor Pacheco at the CAPA World Aviation Summit 2023
Arajet, Founder and CEO, Víctor Pacheco spoke to CAPA TV at the CAPA World Aviation Summit 2023 in Abu Dhabi about latest industry trends and company developments.
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Transcript
Víctor Pacheco:First of all, I have to say we are not a ULCC. We are a low-fare airline, and because we're a low-fare airline, it makes a lot of sense for us to go into the Canadian market because we're looking to have a more efficient connecting hub in Santo Domingo than what is the alternative before Arajet. And to give you an example of that, Almost 50% of the traffic that we have right now to and from Canada is not going to the Dominican Republic. It's actually connecting into Latin America. The airport costs not only are manageable, but when you're talking about flights from, let's say, Toronto to São Paulo in Brazil, the ASKs that you're looking at are huge. So the contribution to the network as a whole are very beneficial to the airline. We are really happy with the MAX 8, how it's performing into our deep south routes, Santiago de Chile and Buenos Aires. The fuel burn on the aircraft is actually better than what we had forecasted for these very long routes. And these markets were starving for the level of pricing that we're able to offer to the markets. And they're giving us great contribution to the whole of our network. They were always in our plan from the very beginning. They make up part of the 60 routes that we identified in our business plan when we founded Arajet. And so right now we just announced actually that we're increasing from 3 frequencies to a daily in Argentina and in Brazil. We've had issues. We've worked with our partner Boeing on the different issues. They have to do with delays. And amongst other different issues. I think it's pretty normal when you're operating brand new equipment that you kind of— that you have issues. But the good thing is that you have a partner to work on those issues and to make sure that you don't hurt your customers. So by the end of the year, we're going to be operating only 22 different destinations and we will increase our fleet. We're right now operating 6 MAX 8s and we will be operating 8. by the end of the year. We were originally supposed to be at 10, but because of the delays in the supply chain, we will only be at 8. We applied in March to New York, Miami, and Puerto Rico, and we are standing, waiting for the DOT to respond to our application. Right now, we are at 45% of connecting passengers because we are not only connecting deep South America to North, but also Central America to North and Central America to South and the Caribbean as well. So we are right now, we have around 150 different connections in our 22 different markets. So I think that it's been a great contribution to the growth and speaks to the potential that Arajet has to grow as a hub in the Americas and the Caribbean. Thank you.
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