Iberia will focus its growth strategy on Latin America during 2023, a transition exercise in which it expects to exceed its pre-pandemic flight offer. The airline is divided into three business segments (airline, handling and Maintenance, following the good dynamics achieved in the third quarter, when it achieved a profit of 246 million, and forecasting a full recovery in 2024, exceeding pre-pandemic levels.
The airline’s president, Javier Sánchez-Prito, said this at the presentation of the new Airbus A350Next, which will operate the New York route. The company plans to induct eight new aircraft of this model, which are much more efficient, between 2023 and 2024, to reach 20 A350s by the end of this year, eight of them NEXT and the remaining 12 in normal configuration.
In 2022, Iberia has recovered the entire network of destinations in 2019, while at the same time it has managed to approach the capacity figures it recorded at the time, with 95% deployed in the fourth quarter. pre-pandemic capacity, and with 2023 capacity likely to be five percentage points higher. Another focus that Iberia has focused on is its robustness Center at Madrid airport with the aim of being able to compete against the main centers European.
Sánchez-Prito stressed that 2022 has been a “year of recovery” for Iberia, which closes the year with an offer equivalent to 95% of 2019, the year before the pandemic. Beyond the recovery of his proposal, he cited as the main milestones of the year the fact that Iberia remained the world’s most punctual airline for one semester, the signing of labor agreements with all of its groups of workers and its Presentation of proposals to renew all its ground support concessions at Spanish airports.
By 2023, IAG Airline expects to recover all of its pre-pandemic capacity and increase profits compared to 2019, leading to growth in the premium segment. Furthermore, in maintenance it intends to become a reference provider in Southern Europe. With regard to its range of radio flights, Iberia will focus its growth on Latin America, after already expanding its offering to North America this year, where it operates ten routes including Mexico City and Puerto Rico. .
For its part, in Latin America it has fixed the last pending routes, flights to Caracas and Rio de Janeiro, and by next summer it plans to reach 260 frequencies, more than the 2019 level. One of the routes on which it will focus its commitment is Colombia, where it is expected to reach 18 weekly frequencies with the aim of reaching three daily flights in the summer. In Peru, it expects to increase its offering to ten weekly frequencies in the summer, to reach two weekly frequencies later.
Along the same lines, it seeks to consolidate double daily frequency to other destinations such as Argentina, and daily frequency to destinations in Central America and the Caribbean. Iberia plans to restore its flights to Japan and China once it recovers its offering in Latin America, however states that action will depend on the development of the war in Ukraine as the said conflict is currently ongoing. Does not allow to fly over Russia.
Air Europa
With regard to the purchase of Air Europa, Sánchez-Preto recalled that IAG is speculating to close the deal by the end of the first quarter of 2023. In any case, he pointed out that for the time being the two companies continue to compete and said that depending on how the negotiations end will remain to be seen if the operation is completed or they continue separately. For all these reasons, Sánchez-Prieto stressed that “we are starting to see how the recovery of activity and results makes us modestly optimistic about the future” and that the labor agreements proposed by the “work in the coming years” gave importance to the stability of
morning country
Wake up with analysis of the day by Bernd Gonzalez Harbor
get it
