Domestic air traffic has recovered faster than international. Aeroregional will offer the Quito-Cuenca route from August 4.
Planes of airlines that operate domestic flights on the platform of Quito’s Mariscal Sucre Airport.
With 7,890 flights, the Guayaquil-Quito route appears in position number 12, in the Ranking of air routes in Latin America and the Caribbean with the most flights in the first half of 2023.
The list of 20 routes is prepared by the Latin American and Caribbean Air Transport Association (ALTA).
Around 670,000 passengers moved between Quito and Guayaquil by air in the first half of 2023, according to preliminary data from Corporación Quiport , administrator of Quito’s Mariscal Sucre International Airport.
The president of the Association of Representatives of Ecuadorian Airlines (Arlae), Marco Subía, says that, in the past, this route came to be in third place among the main ones in the region, after the Sao Paulo-Rio route de Janeiro and Bogota-Medellin.
That good performance was maintained between 2011-2012. But then, with the elimination of the fuel subsidy and the change of location of the Quito airport, there was a sharp drop in domestic flights and on this important route, says Subía.
“Now, we welcome the fact that it is recovering,” adds the president of Arlae, who is confident that the good performance will continue for the rest of the year.
Subía recalls that in the last year local and international air connectivity has been recovering and has returned to the levels it had before the Covid-19 pandemic.
New routes
Currently, four airlines operate in the country on domestic routes: Avianca, Latam, Aeroregional and Equair.
These companies cover eight destinations in the country: Quito, Guayaquil, Cuenca, Loja, Manta, Coca, Santa Rosa, San Cristóbal and Baltra.
This year, in addition, new routes or frequencies have been enabled. For example, the Quito-Cuenca-Quito route, which from this August 4 will also operate Aeroregional , with eight weekly frequencies, on Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays.
The Colombian Avianca and the Chilean Latam also offer flights on this route.
And on July 2, the Manta-Galápagos (Baltra) route, operated by Avianca, began to operate with two weekly frequencies, on Wednesdays and Sundays.
In this case, it is a completely new route, for the first time the two provinces are connected by air. In addition, it serves as a connection for passengers who arrive from Panama to Manta and wish to move to the Galapagos.
The Panama-Manta route began operating on June 27, with the airline Copa.
Recovery
The Communications Manager of Corporación Quiport, Luis Galárraga, explains that domestic traffic has recovered thanks to the general reactivation of air transport in Ecuador, once the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have been overcome.
“In fact, the recovery rate of domestic traffic has been greater than the recovery of international traffic. For the second semester, growth is expected to continue”, adds Galárraga.
In the first half of 2023, close to 1.5 million passengers traveled on internal flights to and from Quito’s Mariscal Sucre Airport.
This represents an increase of 37% compared to the first six months of 2022 and 9% with the same period of 2019, before the pandemic.
Brazil leads the ranking.
The ALTA ranking is led by Brazil, with the Sao Paulo/Congonhas – Rio de Janeiro/Santos Dumont route, with 18,768 flights operated in the first half of 2023. This country appears in the ranking with four domestic routes.
In second place is the Bogotá – Medellín/Rionegro route, from Colombia, with 15,365 flights. Three other internal routes from the neighboring country are also on the list of the 20 most active routes of the semester.
Cancun – Mexico City is in third position, with 13,246 flights. Mexico is the country with the most routes in the ranking, with five.
Peru and Bolivia also appear, with one domestic route each.
