As someone who grew up in Tampa, I’ve enjoyed seeing the airport continue to grow over the years, and I like to keep tabs on what’s going on there. So while I don’t usually cover individual short haul international route additions, here’s one that I find to be pretty cool.
Aeromexico adds Tampa flights as of July 2024
As flagged by @IshrionA, as of July 1, 2024, Aeromexico will be launching a new daily, year-round flight between Mexico City (MEX) and Tampa (TPA). The flight will operate with the following schedule:
AM2740 Mexico City to Tampa departing 10:00AM arriving 3:20PM
AM2741 Tampa to Mexico City departing 4:35PM arriving 6:14PM
The 1,200-mile flight is blocked at 3hr20min to Tampa and 3hr39min to Mexico City. This route will actually be operated by Aeromexico Connect, which is Aeromexico’s regional subsidiary, using an Embraer E190. Aeromexico Connect’s E190s are configured with 99 seats, including 11 business class seats (in a 1-2 configuration) and 88 economy class seats (in a 2-2 configuration).
Tampa has an impressive amount of international service nowadays, including on Air Canada (to various points in Canada), British Airways (to London Gatwick), Cayman Airways (to Grand Cayman), Discover Airlines (to Frankfurt), Edelweiss Air (to Zurich), Copa Airlines (to Panama City), Frontier (to various points in the Dominican Republic), JetBlue (to Cancun), Porter Airlines (to Toronto), Silver Airways (to the Bahamas), Virgin Atlantic (to London Heathrow), and WestJet (to various points in Canada).
Why this new Tampa route makes sense
Presumably this service won’t just appeal to those traveling between Tampa and Mexico City, but this is also useful for all kinds of connections to other destinations in Mexico, and beyond. However, I’d generally recommend avoiding international to international connections in Mexico City, given the need to clear immigration and customs, which can be very time consuming.
I’m not surprised to see Aeromexico finally add this service. For a period of well over two years, Mexico was downgraded to a Category 2 rating with the FAA, meaning that Mexican airlines couldn’t add any new service to the United States. However, in September 2023, Mexico finally regained its Category 1 rating, meaning airlines from Mexico can now add unlimited new service.
We’ve seen Aeromexico announce several new routes, though the airline is being forced to scale back its partnership with Delta, which isn’t ideal in terms of enabling this growth.
Bottom line
Aeromexico is launching a new year-round flight between Mexico City and Tampa, operated by an Aeromexico Connect Embraer E190. It’s great to see Tampa getting yet another international airline, and I imagine this route will have no issues performing reasonably well. The plane has under 100 seats, and this opens up all kinds of easy one-stop routings between Tampa and Mexico, and beyond.
What do you make of Aeromexico adding Tampa flights?
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