Aeromexico Confirms New Mexico City – London Route

SkyTeam alliance member Aeromexico is to introduce a new non-stop service between Mexico City and London Heathrow, bringing competition to a route that has been controlled by British Airways (BA) for many years. As exclusively first reported last week by Routesonline’s The HUB and Airline Route news services, Aeromexico will introduce a three times weekly service from December 14, 2012 using a Boeing 767.

“The beginning of operations between Mexico and London is a great achievement for all of us who work at this airline, as this destination is very important to the national economy and several key sectors that will also benefit from this new connection,” said Andres Conesa, Chief Executive Officer, Aeromexico Group. “This new flight also represents Aeromexico’s commitment to the growth and economic development of Mexico.”

The new link will support the growth of trade between Mexico and Great Britain. In the past decade there has been more than $8 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI) with supporting investment into a range of sectors ranging from the mining industry to high-tech manufacturing.

Grupo Aeromexico already serves 386 destinations, comprising 220 international and 166 national. However, as mentioned above, this route places it directly into competition with a major rival in the form of BA. Its other European routes are supported by a strong SkyTeam network and Paris via Air France and at Madrid through Air Europa, but there is limited connectivity at London, which like Madrid is a major hub of rival alliance oneworld.

According to Aeromexico, passengers will be able to connect at the airport’s Terminal 4 to many destinations in Europe and convenient flight connections will also be available to regions like North Africa and the Middle East. However, most of these options will already be served from Paris. Aeromexico will also find it hard to compete directly with BA which has served the route since 1993, although its domestic and wider Central and South American network could help support the route.

BA has held a monopoly on the Mexico City – London city pair for almost 20 years. It launched services between Mexico City’s Benito Juárez International Airport and London Heathrow in March 1993 using a Boeing 747-400 and although it switched services to London Gatwick in March 1997, it returned the flight to London Heathrow in April 1998, where it has continued to fly since. For almost this entire period BA has been the sole carrier flying between Mexico City and London, but between January 2009 and August 2010 Mexicana provided some competition, serving London Gatwick.

For Aeromexico this new UK link will add to its existing links to France and Spain. The Mexican carrier inaugurated flights to Madrid and Paris Orly in June 1991. The flights to the French capital only lasted a matter of months, but the Spanish link has continued. A link to Paris was resurrected in June 1996, but this time serving Charles de Gaulle, and this has been successfully operated alongside the Madrid connection. A service to Barcelona was also introduced in December 2007 but this was suspended in January 2012 due to low demand.

In the table below we highlight the estimated O&D demand between Mexico City and London Heathrow during the past six years. This market was in growth until 2008. However, the introduction of Mexicana’s route to London Gatwick in 2009 (generating around 18,000 O&D passengers) resulted in traffic falling by around a fifth at London Heathrow. However, growth returned in 2010 and demand reached its highest level last year. For the first half of this year estimated O&D demand was up 2.4 per cent on the same period in 2011, to 47,000 passengers.