Mexicana Airlines Exceeds FYI Expectations
Less than a month after its first Fresno arrival, Mexicana Airlines is having an interesting affect on the airport.
FYI officials were optimistic Mexicana Airlines would be able to fill 75% of its flights. Their projections were way off.
Mexicana Airlines has exceeded expectations since it turned FYI into a true international airport 21 days ago. Mexicana flies five times a week, and airport officials say all 100 seats have been filled on each flight.
Mexicana even brought in a bigger jet Thursday night to transport 120 passengers to Guadalajara, and every flight over the next few weeks is booked solid.
“When you’re filling every seat on brand new flight…I’ve been around a long time, and I’ve actually never seen this phenomenon before,” said aviation director Russ Widmar.
Widmar says Mexicana’s original plan was to add a second daily flight after year one.
“The subsequent year maybe getting some service to to the beach cities in Mexico—Puerto Vallarta, Cancun, Cabo San Lucas,” said Widmar.
Mexicana Airlines is thrilled with the strong start. But Widmar says its too early to think about speeding up expansion plans. “What I think is that they didn’t anticipate this level of success this quickly and neither did we frankly,” said Widmar.
FYI served a record 1,191,239 passengers last year. This year, FYI is already ahead of that pace.
America West has had success with its daily flights to Las Vegas, and this month replaced its 86-passenger regional jets with the much bigger Airbus-319. The bigger jets can fly 112 passengers to Vegas and then continue on to New York City.
“We’re on a growth trend that has exceeded all our expectations,” said Widmar.
Widmar says passengers flying Mexicana have also caused an unexpected spike in revenues from airport food and beverage sales, gift shop sales and even parking.