Desperfects, change of CEO and own union: how was the year of the first low cost in the country

A year ago, at Cordoba airport, a group of cabin crew dressed in jeans and sneakers welcomed the first 189 pbadengers who boarded Nelson, the only Boeing 737-800 the company.

low cost

Flybondi, the pioneer of this segment in Argentina.

With doubts about venturing into something new and the antecedent of a hurtful promotional flight –
it had to land 12 minutes after take-off due to a technical breakdown – the airline was cautiously welcomed by Argentine travelers who however gradually got used to its presence and, most importantly, accepted their proposal: travel less expensive.

From there
First commercial flight, January 26, 2018, whose final destination was Iguazú, Flybondi carried nearly one million pbadengers, of whom more than 130,000 made their first trip by plane. With other companies
low cost Flybondi helped set a historic record: according to the Ministry of Transport, in 2018, the country's airports spent 29.1 million pbadengers on domestic and international flights, about 7%. more than the year before.

Currently, the airline offers flights to 15 destinations in the country and two international flights. It has 21 operational links, three of which were not operated by any airline: Mendoza-Iguazú, Mendoza-Bariloche and Córdoba-Corrientes. In addition, seven new roads have already been put on sale, which will start flying from March, as well as 370 road concessions granted by the state, which will allow it to pursue its expansion plan in coming years.

"Flybondi is
create a new market for pbadengers who previously did not fly or did not do so diligently. In a year of activity, we managed to generate a business model that has been and continues to be disruptive. And among the paradigms we challenge, the one we are most proud of is the democratization of the plane as a means of transport, "said Andrés Vacarezza, Acting CEO of Vacarezza, who previously held the position of Director This past December, Switzerland's Julian Cook, who was in charge of the company's landing and headed it for the first two and a half years, left it vacant.

As explained by Flybondi, Cook decided to move away from everyday life to focus on strategic business plan development instead of vice president of the board.

From the beginning of its operations, the main reluctance of Flybondi's public potential has been a certain mistrust of its security measures, encouraged by some news. Last July, for example,
an aircraft from the Flybondi fleet was unable to take off from Iguazú airport after the ship brushed her back with the runway before getting up. When questioned, the CEO of the time explained that what happened was no different from what could happen in the other airlines and that Flybondi respected the same security measures as the rest of the airlines. He even doubled the bet. "Statistics show that the
low cost they are safer than traditional airlines, "Cook said.

Among the main investors of the Argentine airline are entrepreneurs of others
low cost like Michael Cawley of the Irish company Ryanair and Michael Powell of the Hungarian company Wizz Air. Major shareholders include US group Cartesian Capital Group LLC and Japanese group Yamasa Co.

Flybondi currently has 560 employees, enough to incubate the creation of its own union, which
It was formalized in early January by the government. In any case, it is a union without trade union status, a situation which, for the moment, does not allow it to discuss collective agreements or to negotiate collective agreements. If all goes as planned, the company will transport 10 million pbadengers by 2021 and will multiply in this transit its number of employees, generating 2,000 new direct jobs and more than 25,000 indirect ones.

At the first plane that ushered in the business operations uniting the cities of Cordoba and Iguazú and that Nelson was baptized in honor of the company's CEO Julian Cook's dog, four others have him been added in 2018. Today, the company has a fleet of five aircraft that it keeps moving, since one of the keys to its effectiveness is the high daily use of each aircraft, in addition to optimization of the time, the maximum seating capacity of each aircraft and the segmentation of products and services.