Aeromexico is launching what I’d consider to be an interesting new route to my home airport…
Aeromexico will fly between Miami & Cancun
As reported by @IshrionA, Aeromexico will be launching a new daily flight between Miami (MIA) and Cancun (CUN). Specifically, the new flight will operate as of December 19, 2024, with the following schedule:
AM427 Miami to Cancun departing 7:55AM arriving 9:55AM
AM426 Cancun to Miami departing 11:10AM arriving 1:05PM
The 531-mile flight is blocked at 2hr westbound and 1hr55min eastbound. It will be operated by a Boeing 737 MAX 8, featuring 166 seats, comprised of 16 business class seats and 150 economy class seats.
Notice how the plane for this service is coming “from” Miami rather than from Cancun. Clearly Aeromexico is using a jet that arrives in Miami late at night, then it does a Cancun turn in the morning, and then it returns from Miami to Mexico City in the afternoon.
The Miami to Cancun market is currently served up to five times daily by American. On top of that, JetBlue flies up to three times daily from Fort Lauderdale to Cancun.
I’m happy to see some competition in the market. As someone going for Air France-KLM Flying Blue status, I also welcome the opportunity to earn XPs when traveling to the Cancun area.
Why Aeromexico’s leisure expansion is interesting
On the surface, Mexico’s largest airline launching a flight between Miami and Cancun is hardly surprising, since this is potentially a big leisure market. However, what makes this noteworthy is that historically Aeromexico’s service to the United States has been almost exclusively to & from Mexico City Airport (MEX). For years, the airline didn’t even dabble in operating other leisure routes to the United States.
We recently saw Aeromexico launch flights from Manzanillo (ZLO) to both Atlanta (ATL) and Los Angeles (LAX), so this is the second set of leisure additions by the airline to the United States. In some ways, I’m surprised it took the airline so long to add this kind of flying.
That’s especially true when you consider the close partnership that Aeromexico and Delta have (though it’s being scaled back), which has meant that these kinds of routes could serve Delta’s customer base as well, given all the frequent flyer reciprocity.
I suppose the explanation is that Aeromexico just didn’t have many spare planes to grow, and it needed to preserve its slots in Mexico City, as the airline is the biggest operator there. I’d love to see Aeromexico continue to add service in more leisure markets between Mexico and the United States.
The airline has a much better cost structure than many US airlines. Then again, in many leisure markets, there would be competition from Mexican ultra low cost carriers, like Volaris and Viva Aerobus.
Bottom line
As of December 2024, Aeromexico will launch a new daily flight between Miami and Cancun using a Boeing 737. This is the first international route that the SkyTeam carrier will operate from Cancun, and the airline will be going head-to-head against American.
This kind of leisure flying is still a fairly new concept for Aeromexico, so I’m curious how many more routes like this we see…
What do you make of Aeromexico’s new Miami to Cancun route?
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