LATAM Airlines Group has paused its growth in Colombia given the country's poor macroeconomic situation which has affected the group's core market, business travellers, Senior Vice-President (Commercial) Roberto Alvo said during a quarterly earnings call.
"Given the macroeconomic situation in Colombia, particularly devaluation last year, we decided to pause our growth for a few months. And at this point in time, we are at that stage. But we're looking at the developments very closely, and we're satisfied with what we have achieved in the last seven months," he said.
The Latin American carrier holding announced plans to expand its LATAM Airlines Colombia (4C, Bogotá) subsidiary in mid-2019 and, as Alvo underlined, has so far achieved its development goals. The Colombian unit exclusively operates narrowbody aircraft - eight A319-100s and twelve A320-200s - and predominantly flies domestic routes. Its only international services are to Lima International, according to the ch-aviation schedules module.
Meanwhile, LATAM sees much better short-term opportunities in Brazil, its key market accounting for 35% of its total revenues. To support ambitious growth targets, LATAM Airlines Brasil (JJ, São Paulo Congonhas) added fourteen A320-200s, previously operated by the now-defunct Avianca Brasil (São Paulo Congonhas), in the second half of 2019 and early 2020. A 15th unit of the type is due to join LATAM Brazil's fleet shortly.
"First semester capacity will grow double-digits as compared to first semester last year, and this is basically because of the incorporation of the 14 aircraft that [Senior Vice-President (Corporate Finance)] Andres Del Valle made reference to. We have, at this point in time, no plans of increasing our capacity in terms of number of aircraft further than that. So you will see a gradual decline in growth in the second half, basically, because of the base of the second half of last year," Alvo explained.
