As it celebrates the 60th anniversary of its first scheduled services to South America, Iberia has widened its lead over Air France-KLM, its main competitor on Europe-Latin America routes. In July Iberia posted an…
As it celebrates the 60th anniversary of its first scheduled services to South America, Iberia has widened its lead over Air France-KLM, its main competitor on Europe-Latin America routes. In July Iberia posted an 18.8% market share on these routes, 1.3 points above that of the its French-Dutch rival.
In 2005 Iberia’s share of this market came to 17.5%, just 0.2 points ahead of its main competitor. For the period of January-July 2006, this share reached 18.1%, for a 0.4-point lead over Air France-KLM.
In January-August 2006, Iberia carried more than 2.1 million passengers to and from Latin America, 9.4% more than in the same period of last year.
So far this year Iberia has increased its supply of ASKs (available seat-kilometres) by 9.4% on these routes while demand, expressed in RPKs (revenue passenger-kilometres) has grown by 12.53%. Thus the load factor for the period has amounted to 85.44%, a 2.37 improvement over the 83.2% posted in the same months of 2005, when it grew by 1.6%.
The largest growth was recorded on South Atlantic routes connecting Spain with Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, where Iberia increased supply by 16.24% in the January-August period. Demand, meanwhile; climbed by 23.11% on these routes, which pushed the load factor 4.82 points higher at 86.40%.
Today, 60 years after launched its first regular flights to Buenos Aires, service, Iberia offers more Latin American destinations than any other airline, making 236 return flights, most of them non-stop, each week to 17 Latin American cities, and to another 26 destinations under code-sharing arrangements with other carriers.
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
