A major airline in Miami just made flying more comfortable on one route. Here’s how
Colombia’s national airline, Avianca, is boosting the number of business-class seats on flights between Miami and Bogotá, a move meant to tap into the Magic City’s surging wealth and a growing interest in Latin America’s fourth largest economy.
The carrier has four daily non-stop flights from Miami International Airport to Bogotá, and on Monday, July 1, added to those flights a more exclusive category called Avianca Insignia.
The change comes as competition among airlines flying to Colombia increases and Miami enjoys a front-row seat.
Last month, Emirates, a flagship carrier of the United Arab Emirates, started a daily flight between Miami and Bogotá. It’s a continuation of the Dubai-Miami route and meant to better connect Colombia with the Gulf countries. This week, airline executives will be in Miami to recruit flight crews.
Lots of flights to Colombia
Last year, LATAM added a new daily flight from Miami to Medellin. American Airlines also has dozens of flights between Miami and Colombia. Nearby in the Southeast, Delta Airlines, a partner with LATAM, added a flight between Atlanta and Bogotá last year.
Avianca, which dates back to 1919, has about 62 weekly flights between Miami and Latin America.
In Colombia, the carrier also has direct flights to Bogotá, Cali, Medellin, Barranquilla and Cartagena.
The airline is also expanding in Central America, with three daily non-stop flights from Miami to Managua. San Salvador is the carrier’s second biggest hub after Bogotá.
What to know about Avianca’s business class
Of the four direct flights Avianca flies between Miami and Bogotá, one uses a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which the airline mostly uses on Colombia-Europe routes. The aircraft already had a popular business class with seats that go fully flat.
The other three flights use a narrow-body A-320. After the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Avianca used a single-cabin class. But the first three rows of the planes have two seats on each side of the aisle, offering extra space from the typical economy set-up of three seats.
So, faced with increased demand and rising competition, Avianca turned those three rows into a new business class.
The 12 seats will be configured the same because “the 2x2 is still a comfortable seat,” Rolando Damas, Avianca sales director for North America, Central America and the Caribbean, said in an interview with the Miami Herald. “But the service will be a business class service.”
That means travelers will get a main meal — breakfast, lunch or dinner — drinks, a snack, and a blanket and pillow, even though the flight from Miami is barely three hours.
What are travelers paying for the class upgrades?
Avianca’s website on Monday afternoon listed a round-trip economy ticket for this month costing $483 and a round-trip business class fare running $1,176.
The changes for travelers go beyond Miami. These new business class seats on the narrow-body will be available on non-stop flights between Bogota and other airports: Boston, Washington Dulles, JFK New York, Toronto, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Montevideo, Santiago de Chile and Sao Paulo.
Avianca’s daily flight between Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and Bogota will not offer business- class seats. And once low season starts, in September, the airline will cut the daily service to four flights a week, Damas said.
Avianca is growing in the U.S. The carrier has 377 weekly flights between North America and Latin America.
“The U.S. is a very important operation for us,” Damas said. “We’ve noticed a big increase in leisure traffic to Colombia.”
Avianca’s new seasonal routes
For the summer, Avianca has added 11 seasonal routes, which run now to September. They are:
Miami-Cartagena
Miami-Cali
Orlando-Medellin
Orlando-San Salvador
JFK-Cartagena
JFK-San Pedro Sula (Honduras)
JFK-Cali
JFK-Pereira (Colombia)
Washington Dulles - San José
Chicago-Guatemala City
Las Vegas – San Salvador
