Next month, there are 191,891 scheduled interregional flights in the Latin America & Caribbean region, according to data provided by Cirium. The 79 airlines operating these flights will have 26.2 million seats available. If you were to guess which route has the largest number of flights by a single airline in the region, you would probably say Mexico-Cancun, São Paulo-Rio de Janeiro, or Bogotá-Medellín, and those would be fair guesses, but all wrong.
A surprising operator
While LATAM Airlines Group and Azul Linhas Aereas have the largest number of flights within the Latin American and Caribbean region, they don’t operate the largest number of flights in a single route.
Instead, it is a tiny, relatively unknown airline that operates the most flights in a month in a route throughout the region. We are talking about Belize’s Maya Island Air. According to Cirium’s database, Maya Island Air has 739 scheduled flights between Belize City (BZE) and Placencia (PLJ). Maya Island Air also has the second-busiest route by a single operator, connecting Belize City and San Pedro with over 647 scheduled flights next month.
Maya Island Air is a small regional carrier with a fleet of 13 aircraft, according to its website. It has eight Cessna 208 Caravans, one Cessna 182 Skylane, three Britten Norman Islanders, and one Gippsland Airvan. The carrier operates over 100 daily flights to 11 domestic destinations, as well as regional charters to Guatemala and Honduras.
Avianca, Windward, and other operators
Looking through Cirium’s list Avianca appears in third place with the most flights on a single route. The Colombian carrier will have 593 services between Bogotá and Medellín next month, offering over 100,000 seats. In terms of seats, that’s actually the route (by a single operator) with the most capacity, followed by Avianca’s Bogotá-Cali and Volaris’ Mexico-Cancún.
Coming back to the first list, Windward Island Airways, better known as Winair, has 580 scheduled flights between St. Marten and St. Barthélemy.
LATAM’s busiest route is Rio de Janeiro-Sao Paulo, with 440 scheduled flights; Aeromexico’s is Mexico City-Monterrey with 437 scheduled flights, and Volaris’ is Mexico City-Cancun with 405.
The recovery of the region
As previously stated before, there will be 191,891 scheduled flights in March 2021, with 26.1 million seats available.
Still, these numbers are 19.8% and 12.1% below the pre-pandemic traffic levels when there were 239,172 flights and 29.7 million seats available. The region has also lost several airlines, being Mexico’s Interjet and Brazil’s Avianca Brazil, the two most important, as each had over 7,000 scheduled flights in March 2019.
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LATAM is the largest airline in the region, as it has scheduled over 33,000 flights (still 9.8% fewer than in 2019). The Brazilian carrier Azul Linhas Aereas has 24,847 scheduled flights next month, surpassing its pre-pandemic levels by 10.2%. These two are Latin America’s largest carriers by a mile.
In third place, with 15,439 flights, is Brazil’s GOL Linhas Aereas, followed by Avianca, Volaris, and Aeromexico with 12,778, 12,495, and 11,940 flights, respectively.
Finally, while Maya Island Air’s route between Belize City and Placencia has the largest number of scheduled services by a single carrier, it is not the busiest route in the region. That’s Bogotá-Medellín, with 1,198 flights planned next month and over 205,000 seats available.
Are you surprised that Maya Island Air operates the largest number of flights in a single route in the region? Let us know in the comments below.