Mexico Joins the Budget Airlines Party (Finally)
July 15th, 2006 Posted in Cheap Latin America Travel, Destination reports, Travel industry, Vacation deals
In the current issue of Budget Travel, there’s an article on discount airlines in Mexico. As anyone who has spent much time traveling around Mexico knows, this is some welcome news. Costs to fly within the country on many routes are almost as expensive as flying to a neighboring country. As a result, most people who fly are business travelers with a lot of money at stake or tourists loaded with even more money. Everyone else takes the bus.
In all fairness, a bus trip in Mexico is usually pretty pleasant, at least on well-traveled routes. The journeys aren’t all that cheap, but they’re comfortable. If you spring for the top ticket (at about $7 an hour of travel), you even get three seats across, refreshments, and loads of legroom.
But it’s a big country and it would be a lot easier to fly sometimes. The change comes about through the bane of socialists like Chavez–a new round of privatization. You see, when the government runs the airline, or does some mutual back-scratching with an airline monopoly, there’s no point in competition. Without competition, you get what I just experienced in Argentina: one expensive choice for every route. You pay through the nose or you don’t fly.
So bring on the newbies: Avolar, Click, Interjet, Volaris, and Viva AeroBus. Something tells me the last one especially will be far from lavish, but if it’ll cut 15 hours of travel time and cost a reasonable amount, vamos!
2 Responses to “Mexico Joins the Budget Airlines Party (Finally)”
By kotynasz on Jul 19, 2006
Thank you for the information and link. Unfortunately, the article wasn’t as helpful as it could have been - I don’t know how much time the author actually spent visiting the websites of the discount airlines.
First, anyone that doesn’t have enough Spanish skills to at least figure out the airline website pages (very similar to US airlines I might add) might reconsider travelling through non-coastal/non-tourist parts of Mexico.
Second, it was clear from visiting the websites that the writer didn’t get some of the most important information. Namely that one carrier had a Tijuana hub, one had a Toluca hub, and one wasn’t even taking reservations yet. One was the Ted/United of Mexico (an affiliate of always pleasant Mexicana airlines), so its higher prices came as no shock when I saw the little Mexicana logo. All in all, only two airlines on their clearly or probably hub in Mexico DF, so connections throughout the country are trickier than they might first appear.
All in all a great development for Mexico travel, but a disappointing article at Budget Travel Online.
By Tim L. on Jul 21, 2006
Valid points all.
I think they noted that this is still very much a work in progress and that most sites are in Spanish only right now. It will be a while before Mexico is anywhere close to the great competitive situation we see in the U.S., Europe, and parts of Asia. But at least it’s a start. For now, I believe it is worth it to use a Mexican travel agent (who speaks English) to ferret out the different options for you, even if you have to pay them a fee. Also check the web sites in English for specific destinations. Every city has one if you dig around and they will usually be very up on new airline developments.