MEXICO CITY — Mexico introduced Thursday that its army-run airline will begin up in September — however the flight attendants received’t be troopers.
The administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has additionally put trains, legislation enforcement, tourism and infrastructure tasks below the military’s command. That features one vacationer ferry line serving the Isla Marias islands that’s manned by navy personnel.
However on the brand new Mexicana airline, you received’t have to fret about being instructed to “Fasten your seatbelt, and that’s an order!” The Protection Division stated the airline will lease 10 Boeing 737-800 jets from the producer, which can present pilots and cabin crew.
Protection Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval initially stated the contract with Boeing can be for $4 billion, however later corrected himself to say he meant 4 billion pesos, or about $235 million.
He stated the airline is 20 potential routes between Mexico Metropolis and huge and mid-size Mexican cities, a few of which have restricted service at current, in addition to vacationer resorts like Cancun.
Sandoval promised ticket costs can be 18% to twenty% beneath non-public opponents, however was not sure if the airline would worthwhile. If not, it presumably must function with authorities subsidies.
The airline has been named Mexicana after a partly state-owned provider that went into chapter 11 in 2010 and closed.
The 8,500 laid-off former staff of Mexicana are longtime supporters of the president, and his administration agreed to pay them nearly $50 million for the industrial rights to the {old} airline’s model title and a few decrepit properties. Consultants have stated the quantity far exceeded the market worth.
The brand new airline combines López Obrador’s love of state-owned firms — he has criticized choices by earlier administrations to dump once-extensive authorities firms — and his near-total reliance on the armed forces, which he views as trustworthy and a bulwark towards corruption.
A military-led firm operates the brand new Felipe Angeles airport that the president had constructed as a 3rd airport serving Mexico Metropolis and is setting up a brand new airport on the Caribbean coast resort of Tulum.
Other than boosting visitors on the underused Felipe Angeles airport, the army-run Mexicana apparently will present flights to feed passengers into the president’s Maya Prepare tourism undertaking. The military can also be constructing that practice line, which can join seaside resorts and archaeological websites on the Yucatan Peninsula.
The military, which has no expertise working industrial flights, has created a subsidiary ito be in control of Mexicana.
López Obrador has prompt the brand new airline may additionally serve one of many traditional roles of state-owned carriers: offering service to provincial airports on routes thought of unprofitable by industrial airlines. That concept might run afoul of laws that now prohibit airways from working Mexican airports, or vice versa.