Mexican low-cost airline VivaAerobus inaugurated a new route on Thursday from Mexico City to New York. The first flight, VB3940, departed Mexico City on-time just after 7:00 a.m. and arrived 4 hours later just before 1:00 p.m. Its arrival in New York marked the sixth U.S. destination for the airline and second on the East Coast following Newark, N.J., with most of its destinations in the Midwest or Western United States.
The inaugural flight flew an unusual route that hugged the eastern coast of Mexico, crossing the border near Brownsville, Texas, instead of flying out across the Gulf of Mexico to intercept land in Northern Florida as other flights do. A few miles into U.S. airspace, it cut across the Gulf of Mexico, never more than 25 or so miles from the coast, and continued the journey across the U.S. to New York.
VivaAerobus plans to operate a daily roundtrip originating in Mexico City on its Airbus A320, utilizing Terminal 1 at JFK Airport, the all-international terminal owned by a consortium of airlines that includes Lufthansa, Air France, Japan Airlines and Korean Air. The inaugural flight was operated by an Airbus A320neo, registration XA-VIM, making it one of the few carriers to operate an A320neo, the fuel-efficient variant of the popular single-aisle aircraft, to JFK, a list that also includes InterJet.
[...]
The ultra-low-cost airline joins a long list of airlines currently flying the route, chief among them Mexican flag carrier Aeromexico but also Volaris, InterJet and Delta Air Lines. With the inclusion of VivaAerobus, there are around 20 daily flights between the two cities dominated by Aeromexico and InterJet with no shortage of competition from other carriers, not including service at nearby Newark Liberty International Airport from United Airlines.
Despite the long list of carriers, hundreds of available seats and numerous aircraft flying the route on a daily basis ranging from A320s to a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, the market between the two economic hubs remains profitable and undaunting for new entrants. JetBlue Airways will be joining in on the route with new service beginning on Oct. 25 from JFK Airport’s Terminal 5 with a daily roundtrip on its A320 aircraft, a route which survived the network cuts announced earlier this month.