LATAM Airlines Brazil has been seeing a rebound in Brazil‘s market network, even though it is still below pre-pandemic levels. The company said demand for air travel within the country has been gradually increasing with the expectation of a speedy vaccination process in the country.
In Brazil, LATAM is operating 49% of what was operated in the same month in 2019. This projection is higher than in April of this year when the company operated 38%, and it expects to operate at around 90% by December 2021.
Feeling optimistic, the company plants to hire 750 pilots and new crew members by the end of the year. Additionally, seven aircrafts are arriving in Brazil to strengthen the domestic network. The group announced an aggressive plan to grow the freighter fleet in Latin America, going from 11 to 21 aircraft dedicated to cargo transport.
Last year, LATAM and Brazilian airline Azul made a codeshare agreement for 64 routes in the country. One year after, LATAM said will stop the codesharing deal in August since “both companies now have better conditions to sell their own flights.”
“This codeshare agreement was an alternative identified by the two companies to face the drop in sales and reduction of airline networks during the peak of the pandemic. With the prospect of improvement, there is no longer any point in it,” said Jerome Cadier, CEO of LATAM Airlines Brazil, in a press statement.
According to him, both the expansion and the volume of passengers benefiting from this agreement have fallen short of LATAM‘s initial expectations during this year.
“We are already operating all the destinations we operated pre-pandemic from Guarulhos international airport and we are coming back with some routes from Congonhas. Additionally, we have scheduled new destinations that we will launch soon. In May we will operate 250 daily flights and for July we schedule to operate around 400 daily flights”, he commented.
“In the international market, we remain confident in the opening of borders with the advanced immunization process both in the US and in Europe,” adds Cadier.
According to LATAM, the ending of this codeshare agreement is aligned between both companies and will not bring any impact to passengers. The agreement also includes the reciprocal accumulation of points in the LATAM Pass and TudoAzul loyalty programs.
