By Barbara Mejia and Manvi Rathi
During the Covid-19 pandemic recovery, the US-Mexico air traffic market has witnessed astounding development. In May 2021, Mexico was placed under CAT 2 of Safety and Security per US FAA that constraints Mexican airlines to add new or additional service into the US market. Even with such restrictions and the market being impacted by the 2020 pandemic, the flight frequencies between US and Mexico market have surpassed the 2019 levels. The number of travelers has returned to the pre-covid levels- the number of passengers in Jan-May 2022 has exceeded by 14% that of Jan-May 2019.
Exhibits 1 and 2. Number of Round-trip Flights and Passengers in the US-Mexico market
Source: OAG/IATA Airport-IS
In 2021, the number of flights in the market reached the 2019 levels, and in 2022 there was an improvement of 8% as compared to pre-pandemic levels. However, while there has been an overall improvement in the market, the Mexican airlines are yet to reach their pre-pandemic levels- lagging by 7% as compared to their 2019 performance, while US carriers have surpassed their pre-pandemic levels by 15%.
Exhibits 3 and 4. Number of Bi-Directional Flights and annual change in the US-Mexico market by Carriers´ country, 2019-2022
Source: OAG;
Both the US and Mexican based carriers are recovering back to pre-covid level as evident from the rising number of flight and passenger numbers. However, there are only a few airlines that are driving a robust growth in the market, as explained by the growth in their number of flights.
While Mexican carriers witnessed a rise of 9% in number of flights in 2022 compared to 2021, the frequencies are slowly improving to the 2019 levels that could be attributed to CAT 2 FAA restrictions.
Volaris is the lead Mexican airline, in terms of the number of flights in the US-Mexico market between 2019-2022, with an 18% rise in the flights frequency in 2022 as compared to 2019.
Exhibit 5. Top Carriers in the US-Mexico market based on number of bi-directional flights between 2019 and 2022
Source: IATA Airport-IS/OAG
In 2022, American Airlines witnessed an increase in the number flights by 18%, between 2019 and 2022, and number of travelers by 30% between Jan-May 2022 and the same time period in 2019 – thus securing its place as the lead airline in the US-Mexico market.
Exhibit 6. Top Carriers in the US-Mexico market based on number of passengers between 2019 and 2022
While American Airlines and Volaris have surpassed their 2019 frequencies levels, other top carriers have not reached their pre-pandemic levels, however despite the imposition of the CAT 2 restrictions some other carriers have increased drastically their number of frequencies in their market. Carriers include Vivaaerobus, Frontier, Spirit, Aeromar and JetBlue that have 3 digits growth compared to 2019.
In 2022, Vivaaerobus grew its number of frequencies from 67 to 268 weekly frequencies in both ways (298% growth) and Aeromar from 10 to 24 (135% growth) weekly frequencies in both ways, compared to 2019. Frontier Airlines, a US-based airline, grew its weekly frequencies in both ways by 199% in 2022 as opposed to 2019 from 61 to 181 weekly frequencies.
Exhibit 7. Mexican and US carriers with major increases in the number of frequencies compared to 2019.
Source: OAG
While business travel has struggled to go back to pre-pandemic levels, and might not reach those levels in the near future, leisure travelers are looking for places to relax after lockdowns and travel constraints. Therefore, air carriers have changed their network from business to leisure destinations during the recovery period. Cancun, the most popular Mexican leisure destination has experienced a 43% rise in the seat numbers between 2019 and 2022. In 2022, San Jose Cabo and Puerto Vallarta, two popular leisure Mexican destinations, have also experience a rise in the passenger numbers by 1 million each, as compared to 2019 as shown in Exhibit 8.
Exhibit 8. Top Mexican destinations by number of seat capacity in 2019 and 2022
Source: OAG
As in 2019, leisure Mexican destinations are led by US based carriers, while non-leisure destinations such as Guadalajara and Mexico City are led by Mexican based carriers as shown in exhibit 10. In 2022, 97% of the passengers travelling to Cancun have been using the US based carriers, while only 3% (50K passengers) are using a Mexican carrier.
Seat capacity share is led by US based carrier with 74% of the seats.
Exhibit 9 and 10. Market Share and Seat Capacity by carrier based country in 2022
Source: OAG
While CAT 2 has been limiting Mexican carriers to increase the number of operations and new routes in the US-Mexico market, capacity levels are well beyond 2019 levels, in a combination of new routes to leisure destinations by US carriers, and recovery capacity levels granted pre-CAT 2 to Mexican carriers. Mexican carriers should be expected to surpass 2019 levels in short term once CAT 1 is granted.
