Uruguay hasn’t had any sort of a major passenger airline in over a decade, since PLUNA went out of business in 2012. There’s an interesting update, as plans have just been announced for a new national carrier to be launched, with a twist. I first wrote about this a few days ago when it was…
Continue reading: Uruguay Launching Saudi Funded Airline With airBaltic Airbus A220s
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
I think the first mistake of this type of ventures is to start up as a flag/national carrier, it never worked for ALAS Uruguay, Uruguay is a small country, with a small population and their market is dominated by their neighbors, they should've taken another approach, maybe a hybrid/low cost carrier with a bold and modern identity would be succesful. I don't like the livery at all but I wish them all the best, I think there's more than enough argentinian and brazilian airlines, even chilean airlines that could cover different routes out of MVD and PDP and exploit that market.
Argentina has just changed their rules concerning aviation rights, nowadays a foreign company can operate domestic services there. So I suppose they are interested in his market as well a also operating MVD as a connecting point between Argentina and other regional countries like Chile and Brazil.
Does AirBaltic hire crews from/have bases in Spain or Portugal like Ryanair or Easyjet? If not, I'm wondering how many crewmembers for a Latvian airline will speak Spanish or Portuguese
aitBaltic currently has many crew members that are either multi-lingual or of a Spanish origin. Plus, I believe, part of the cabin crew will be locally hired to ensure the standards (which yet to be customised)