In this context, Travel2latam spoke with Marina Colunga, Commercial Director for Latin America for Iberia.
What's new for Iberia in Latin America regarding flights, passengers and projects?
Iberia in Latin America is in one of its best moments. We are planning to close this year with almost 5,3 million seats on our routes, which represents a historic figure across the 18 airports we serve in 16 countries.
We have three daily flights in some of the countries with historic records. In Mexico, Colombia and Argentina we have just started the third daily flight, connecting, for example, from Buenos Aires to Madrid.
Now here at Peru Travel Mart, we are also sharing a milestone for connectivity with Peru, with 13 weekly flights. This means two flights a day, every day of the week, except Thursdays. And not only two daily flights, but also larger aircraft, which allows us to not only grow in the number of frequencies, but in capacity, and this story is repeated throughout Latin America. So we are truly experiencing a moment of expansion.
The Madrid hub continues to grow, and we currently connect to 142 destinations from there. And one of the new features we have is that, starting October 27, we will connect Madrid to Tokyo.
Normally, when people think of Iberia, they imagine Spain because we are a Spanish company, but we really connect much further beyond that. We invite you to learn about our offers and benefit from the power of our distribution.
Is there anything new in the works for 2025?
We are currently working on consolidating this growth. Capacity increases are one of the biggest challenges that we all know exist in Latin America, because you never know what will happen tomorrow. Latin America manages a dynamic environment, but we have a very big stake.
When you increase capacity, there is a huge financial commitment or investment. So we are looking at strengthening these routes in the first half of the year. We will probably see some additional increases in the second half of the year, but for the moment we will continue to strengthen these capacity increases.
Are you considering adding more flights to the same destination?
What is published at this time for the first half of the year is what we are going to be handling. I think that new destinations will probably be generated. We are close to receiving the XLR aircraft. With them, it is possible that we will have some new destinations from Madrid, not necessarily for Latin America. But surely by the end of the first quarter of next year we will have some news that will be for America.
Which countries are breaking passenger records?
In general, we are breaking records throughout Latin America. The numbers we are seeing in Mexico are extraordinary. The ones we are seeing here in Peru are historic, with growth of more than 50% on pre-pandemic levels. The number of flights we have in Argentina, with all the relevant circumstances, is also historic; we have never had three flights a day. Brazil is another country that is growing a lot, as is Chile.
Iberia's real bet is on Latin America and the record of 5,3 million seats is historic in the region.
What connections do you have with Central America?
Central America is one of the regions that remains somewhat more stable in terms of growth. We have connectivity to Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica and Panama, and then in the Caribbean we have Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. Venezuela is not Central America, but it is part of our Central America region. In some of these destinations we have had capacity changes, but in general we are seeing that they will remain.
The news for Central America is one of stability and maintaining our connectivity as strong as we have had this year.