Four foreign routes and 16% of Colombia's domestic market are up for grabs after the sudden liquidation of ACES, which with Avianca and SAM made up Alianza Summa.
AeroCivil plans to reallocate those routes shortly, with several local airlines vying for domestic awards. Avianca and Aerorepublica are competing for the international routes.
The domestic carriers seeking routes are West Caribbean Airlines, which recently added Boeing MD-81 and MD-82 jets to its turboprop fleet; regional carrier Aires, which operates Dash 8s; and Aerolínea de Antioquia. Avianca and Aerorepublica want the trunk routes from Bogota to Medellin, Cali and Cartagena.
The domestic scene is complicated by demands from private carriers for the government to scale back Colombian air force-operated Satena, which they claim is encroaching on more commercial routes.
AeroCivil will also be reallocating ACES's routes to Lima, Santo Domingo, Fort Lauderdale and Miami. With Avianca already serving some of these, new awards will be a test of AeroCivil's commitment to a double designation policy. Bogota has generally favoured only one carrier per route, with a few exceptions.
Source: Airline Business
