Few international destinations are as 'hot' as Cancún. Renowned as a winter destination, the Mexican tourist resort will have a record January, with 1.4 million seats for sale – by far its highest ever – across ten airlines and 104 routes.
A record January
Non-stop capacity between the US and Cancún is at its highest level to date. Seats for sale are a third greater than 12 months ago and 51% higher than in 2019, based on analyzing schedules information from data experts Cirium.
As the destination is close to the US, borders haven't been as restricted as others, and leisure demand has generally remained buoyant, the market hasn't suffered as severely as others, at least by this measure.
January seats are up by 349,000 year-on-year, equivalent to an extra 11,000 every day. In the current month, Sun Country has added Cancún from Milwaukee, Alaska Airlines San Francisco, and Spirit Milwaukee and St Louis. Meanwhile, Frontier inaugurated Boston, Baltimore, Detroit, and Minneapolis, with Columbus launching on January 21st.
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American leads the ten-strong list of airlines
The market has ten airlines, down by one year-on-year (YOY) following the exit of Interjet, which ceased to exist about a year ago. With one in five seats for sale, American remains the dominant carrier.
While not surprising, virtually every single seat is from a US carrier. The only exception is VivaAerobús, with a truly minuscule share of the market – one-tenth of 1% – because of only one route in January, a three-weekly service to Cincinnati. It'll be fascinating to see how the proposed joint venture between Allegiant and VivaAerobús develops the market.
- American: 288,874 January seats for sale (20.71% of the total)
- United: 250,727 (17.98%)
- Delta: 218,734 (15.68%)
- Frontier: 192,796 (13.82%)
- JetBlue: 144,532 (10.36%)
- Spirit: 125,454 (8.99%)
- Southwest: 119,906 (8.60%)
- Alaska: 33,346 (2.39%)
- Sun Country: 18,600 (1.33%)
- VivaAerobús: 1,860 (0.13%)
Frontier has grown fivefold, but...
American has expanded by more than 22,000 seats YOY, from adding Austin and Los Angeles and growing various existing markets, especially Chicago. However, Frontier, JetBlue, United, Southwest, and Spirit all added more, although from far smaller bases.
Frontier has grown its Cancún offering fivefold, adding 156,000 extra seats, pushing it up three places to fourth-largest. This huge jump is partly because January 2021 had the lowest volume of Frontier seats since 2012. However, the ULCC now has 19 routes from the airport, its highest ever, while using larger aircraft.
104 US routes in January
Cancún has 104 routes to the US, up from 70 YOY and 80 in January 2019, when InterJet operated. If airlines are stripped out, there are 37 airport-pairs, the same as last year, showing that the development is from expanding existing markets and more competition.
Los Angeles and O'Hare have five airlines, while four operate to Austin, Boston, and St Louis. Multiple others have three, including Milwaukee and Kansas City. In contrast, Atlantic City, Chicago Midway, Hartford, Houston Hobby, Las Vegas, Portland (Oregon), Sacramento, San Diego, San Antonio, Tampa, and Washington Dulles have one each, even if there's only one flight in the month, such as Southwest to San Antonio (January 1st).
With over 52,000 January seats, Cancún to Dallas Fort Worth has more capacity than any other market. American, Frontier, Spirit, and Sun Country all serve it, with up to ten daily departures.
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