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 Travel & Outdoors | July 2006 
AeroMexico to Fly to Fort Lauderdale
 Tom Stieghorst - South Florida Sun-Sentinel
| | AeroMexico has picked Fort Lauderdale for its third gateway into Florida. |
The largest Mexican carrier by fleet size, AeroMexico plans to begin the only nonstop daily service between Mexico City and Fort Lauderdale within the next sixty days at fares averaging about $350 round trip.
It will be the second go-around for AeroMexico, which launched flights on the same route in July 2003 only to abandon them a year later.
Now U.S. travelers are flying more and demand has stabilized, said Erika Moore Chalita, the airline's senior vice president of international sales.
'When the U.S. decides it is ready to go flying, the whole aviation industry booms,' she said.
Several airlines, including Delta, Continental and American, offer one-stop service from Fort Lauderdale to Mexico City. Traffic has grown 8 percent between the two cities over the last year, Moore said.
By offering a non-stop flight of about three hours, AeroMexico hopes to gain about a 35 percent share of the market, which averages about 550 passengers a day, Moore said.
With 71 jets, AeroMexico is marginally larger than Mexicana. Both carriers are seeing new competition domestically from startup discount airlines, and Moore said AeroMexico is making a big push into new international markets.
AeroMexico added a fourth daily flight to Miami in May, and serves Orlando with daily service (twice daily on weekends) plus charter flights during the summer. Fort Lauderdale would be the airline's 14th U.S. destination.
AeroMexico is part of SkyTeam, which means frequent flier miles earned on Delta, Continental and seven other airlines are interchangeable with those of AeroMexico.
Although both large Mexican carriers went bankrupt in the mid-1990s and were controlled for a decade by the Mexican government, Mexicana was sold to investors earlier this year, and an auction of AeroMexico is anticipated by year's end, Moore said.
Tom Stieghorst can be reached at tstieghorst@sun-sentinel.com.
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