APPLICATION OF INCA AIRLINES FOR MEMBERSHIP OF INFINITY ALLIANCE
With this message, Inca Airlines wishes to apply for membership of the Infinity Alliance. As Peru's national carrier, we are convinced that our membership of this alliance could be interesting for our airline as much as for the other members of the Infinity Alliance. We will give in this text an overview of our activities, our goals, and the reasons why we think our membership of this alliance could be interesting for both parties.
Inca Airlines - A short presentation
Inca Airlines is the national carrier of Peru. The airline was founded in September 2010, and connects the national capital of Peru, Lima, to the rest of the country. All Peruvian airports are served by us, each one with several flights a day to Lima. Our goal is to offer a reliable but affordable service to our passengers, we fly with modern airplanes (ATR, Embraer and Airbus), we offer a good onboard service, all to guarantee a safe and sound journey. Most Peruvian airlines have a bad record on flight safety, so our airline is proud to offer the highest European and North-American standards on safety and maintenance.Inca Airlines - Short and Long Term StrategyOur airline is currently expanding its national services in Peru. Originaly starting with 42-seater ATR-42-500 planes, we our constantly expanding our flight capacities to meet the growing demand: we employ now several ATR72 planes, and just started flying between Peru's major cities Lima and Cusco 5 times a day with an Airbus A320. As the only airline in Peru, our goal is to continue increasing our capacity on the national flights, and in the same time offering an increasing number of international connections from Lima. We offer ourselves daily services to Rio de Janeiro and Guayaquil (Ecuador's second international airport), and for our future expansion we think of linking up with Argentina, Mexico, the United States, Europe, Australia and Asia. The order of these expansions will be determined by the opportunities concerning alliances etc. that we may encounter, but a strong link with the United States is for us indispensable for our future international development.
Why we think joining the Infinity Alliance can be beneficial for both partiesInca Airlines is the only airline serving all Peruvian cities, and brings a considerable load of passengers to the capital Lima from all over the country. On this moment, we bring more then 15.000 passengers weekly from and to Lima, or more then 2.000 a day, and with the upgrades of airplanes that we plan in the coming 3-4 weeks, we estimate we can bring this even to 20.000-25.000 weakly, or more then 3.000 daily. Many of these passengers will want to connect outside Latin America, and the USA are a likely transfer destination. Airlines linking up with Inca Airlines, can as such be guaranteed a stable influx of passengers on their lines.
On the same time, we notice that connecting to the United States is crucial for our further development. We don't want to do this however without strong guarantees of a good demand for these routes, and we don't necessarily want to do this all with our own flights. We want to connect to Infinity Alliance for several reasons:
- We have no competing routes with the Alliance, and for the moment are quite compatible
- Infinity Alliance has a weakness in South America, to which we can assist in bridging the gap
- We want to connect in the near future to the United States and Asia, and we believe that this can be done in collaboration with Infinity Alliance
- We believe in the network and development of this alliance, and want to be a part of it.
Other remarksFor the moment, we have immediate linking possibilities with Fly By Air, Latitude Zero Ecuador and Fly By Columbia in Lima, and with the two Fly By's, Pannonian, and South Blue Atlantic in Rio de Janeiro. We have already send request for interlinking with these airlines. We currently have a link with one competitor of the alliance in Brazil (Rio Jet of BIRDS), because we need a strong network in Brasil that can bring demand to our line to Rio de Janeiro. No other agreements at all exist with this alliance, and we are of course prepared of stopping this interlinking if asked for, and we are prepared of adapting our flights into Brasil on the network of South Blue Atlantic (for example by linking to Sao Paulo Guralhos instead of Rio to feed this airline's hub). The same goes for our flight to Guayaquil: currently there is no link between this city and Lima, but if this line bothers Latitude Zero Ecuador, we are willing to change it. As such, we are completely prepared to discuss our further developments inside the alliance.
Our manager is an active player, checking the account several times a day, and taking this airline seriously. We realise that it is impossible to develop our network further without connecting to the United States, and we will have to do this one way or another. One idea is linking also to Miami, where other alliance members can be feeded, but we are prepared of discussing our whole development into the US inside the alliance to prevent competition. This linking with the US is however crucial, and we prefer to do it within a strong alliance like Infinity.
Of course, we are prepared of continuing discussing about all the aspects of our application, and will be happy to hear all the questions you might have.
Sincerely,
Mr. Juan Rodriguez-Hidalgo
CEO Inca Airlines