| Airline: | Aeroméxico Connect |
| Fleet Size: | 37 |
| Destinations: | 60 |
| Iata: | 5D |
| Icao: | SLI |
| Callsign: | COSTERA |
| Parent: | Aeroméxico |
| Founded: | |
| Headquarters: | Mexico City, Mexico |
| Frequent Flyer: | Club Premier |
| Aoc: | LVQF318F[1] |
| Alliance: | SkyTeam (affiliate) |
Aerolitoral, S.A. de C.V., DBA Aeroméxico Connect, and formerly known as Aerolitoral, is the regional airline of Aeroméxico operating Embraer 190 aircraft, with crew bases in Mexico City and Monterrey. It is headquartered in Monterrey.[2] It operates feeder services to AeroMéxico's hub airports, using four-digit flight numbers. It is considered the biggest and most important regional airline in Mexico, offering more than 300 scheduled flights daily to 42 destinations in Mexico, 11 in the United States, five in Central America, and two in the Caribbean.[3] Its main bases are Guadalajara, Mexico City, and Monterrey.[4] Aeromexico Connect flights are marketed as Aeromexico.
The airline was established in 1988 as Servicios Aéreos Litoral, to later become a subsidiary of Aeroméxico on December 1, 1990.[5] It started with a fleet of 4 NAMC YS-11 aircraft in 1988 (XA-ROL, XA-ROV, XA-RPU, and XA-RRG) and was originally based in Veracruz. In February 1992, AeroMéxico started another regional feeder airline, Aerovías de Poniente, S.A. de C.V. based in Guadalajara using Fairchild Metroliners. The fleet was replaced and expanded quite fast between 1991 and 1995 and grew to a total of 29 Fairchild Metro III and Fairchild Metro 23 aircraft between the two feeders.
In 1991, the main base was moved to Monterrey and in 1992, Aeroponiente started operations from Guadalajara. The pilot seniority list was merged, and a common paint scheme was adopted using the Aeroméxico logo. Since 1992, Aerolitoral has been the only source of pilots for Aeroméxico with more than 400 pilots transferred until today. In 1993, a small base was opened in Culiacán and after 3 months was moved to Chihuahua. By 1995, the commuter airline had three bases with 29 airplanes.
The route network expanded all across the north of Mexico, and some routes to the United States were operated for a brief period, such as: Harlingen, McAllen, Corpus Christi, and Austin in Texas as well as to Albuquerque, New Mexico. The main U.S. routes operated in this period were San Antonio, Tucson, El Paso, and Phoenix.
In 1996, the two airlines were merged into AeroLitoral S.A de C.V., causing some labor problems to continue during 1997, and a pilot strike in the same year. There was a high demand for a bigger airplane in the route network and the Fairchild Metroliner 19 seater was not enough. After a long selection, Saab 340s were introduced in late 1997. In 1998 new services to the United States were added from Piedras Negras. and from Chihuahua to Dallas.
In early 1999, AeroLitoral was operating 29 Fairchild Metroliners and 6 Saab 340s. One Fairchild Metroliner had been converted to freighter and operations to Mexico City were resumed on behalf of Aeromexpress. In August 1999 a new CEO was appointed and Raúl Sáenz Campos replaced Carlos Treviño Treviño after a long time being at the airline. On December of the same year, the directive board decided to start a fleet renewal process, by replacing the first 3 Metroliners.
In the period between the years 2000 and 2002, 13 more Saab 340Bs were added to replace Metros, with a peak fleet of 22 Saab 340Bs.On the third quarter of 2001, services to San Diego via Mexicali, to Zacatecas via Puerto Vallarta, and Monterrey were launched. Nevertheless, these services were discontinued shortly after 9/11 Attacks. On September 6, 2001, there was an accident without any fatalities, it was a Saab 340 with registration XA-ACK which crash-landed 15 miles southeast of Tijuana. The airplane suffered fuel starvation, due to a false indication in the flight deck fuel gauges, caused by a defective element on the system, reflecting more fuel than the aircraft actually had.
After the September 11, 2001 attacks, AeroLitoral experienced a drop in air traffic and downsized the fleet in order to survive. Services to San Diego, El Paso, and Laredo were canceled. San Antonio, Phoenix, and Tucson were reduced, moreover with the growth of Aviacsa on the domestic market with its Boeing 737-200 fleet invading the most profitable routes from Monterrey to León, Ciudad Juárez, Culiacán, and Guadalajara. The small commuter experienced severe financial troubles, and in 2002, many employees were laid off, among them 50 pilots. In 2002, services to Los Angeles and Ontario, California were introduced on behalf of Aeroméxico, while services to Phoenix and Laredo were cancelled.
In early 2003, with a fleet of 3 Fairchild Metroliners and 22 Saab 340s, the load factors were recovering as with many other airlines around the globe. That same year, AeroLitoral announced the acquisition of the first 5 Embraer ERJ 145, with deliveries starting in mid-2004. In December 2003, after operating a peak fleet for 13 years with 28 planes, the last Metroliners were retired. Early the next year, the first 3 ERJ 145's arrived from Brazil to Monterrey and started to replace the Saabs on the routes from Monterrey lasting over 1 hour, 50 minutes. The first flights were mainly to Chihuahua, Guadalajara, and Ciudad Juárez, and two of the same aircraft were added later that year. In this same year, a wet lease contract from was signed between Aerocaribe and AeroLitoral. The agreement stated that AeroLitoral would provide service in the routes on the South East of the country on behalf of Aerocaribe. The contract covered the wet lease of 3 Saab 340s operating the routes to Mérida, Tuxla Gutierrez, and the shuttle between Cancún and Cozumel. The agreement lasted a year and ended in late May 2005.
In 2005, the first scheduled services in and out of Mexico City on behalf of Aeroméxico were introduced to Ciudad Obregón and Los Mochis, using ERJ 145 aircraft. During this year, five more ERJ 145s were introduced to the fleet, introducing new routes to central Mexico and the southeast of the country, as well as increasing the size of the fleet to 10 aircraft.
In 2006, AeroLitoral took over services from Mexico City to Campeche and Durango, previously operated by Aeromar on behalf of Aeroméxico, and resumed operations to Reynosa, Oaxaca, and other Aeroméxico non-revenue city pairs. By the end of 2006, an ERJ crew base in Mexico City was established, 13 more ERJs were introduced to the fleet, most of them in addition, bringing the number of 23 by the end of the year.
In 2007, AeroLitoral returned to Austin on behalf of Aeroméxico from Mexico City, reopened the hub in Guadalajara with an ERJ fleet, which grew to 32 frames. In November 2007, Aeroméxico announced that AeroLitoral was going to become Aeroméxico Connect once the Embraer 190s arrived, and so it did. The airline changed its corporate name, image, and introduced a new philosophy of complementing Aeroméxico on some domestic and international flights, instead of only feeding the airline's hubs. The first four brand-new Embraer 190 arrived in October 2007 and early 2008, and the airline announced an order for 12 more frames that started arriving in early 2009. On November, SkyTeam painted Aeroméxico Connect's ERJ 145 in SkyTeam livery.
Aeroméxico Connect has grown over the past few years in the Mexican domestic market. It has come from being a feeder airline to a key on Aeroméxico's strategy to remain in the industry. As new aircraft have been added since 2004, Aeroméxico has been shifting many of its domestic and short-haul international routes to Aeroméxico Connect. The intended plan of the holding consortium of the two airlines is to keep developing Aeroméxico Connect in those markets where mainline Aeroméxico would not profit, moreover after the addition of the Embraer 190 that is capable of operating on some longer routes that were formerly served by mainline Aeroméxico with McDonnell Douglas DC-9 and MD-87 aircraft. Also of interest is the airline´s choice to replace its ERJ 145 fleet with newer Embraer 170 and 190 jets, currently under manufacture for Aeroméxico. Three new Embraer 170s arrived in the summer of 2012. They fully replaced the ERJ 145 in 2017. The airline serves international destinations in Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the United States, while offering serving regional routes throughout Mexico.
As of August 2024, Aeroméxico Connect operates the following aircraft:[6]
| Aircraft | In service | Orders | Passengers | Notes | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| J | Y | Total | |||||
| Embraer 190 | 37 | - | 11 | 88 | 99 | ||
| Total | 37 | - | |||||
Aeroméxico Connect also previously operated the following aircraft types:[7]
| Aircraft | Total | Introduced | Retired | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Embraer ERJ 145 | 40 | 2007 | 2017 | |
| Embraer 170 | 13 | 2012 | 2020 | |
| Embraer 175 | 3 | 2013 | 2017 | |
| Fairchild Metroliner | 23 | 1991 | 1999 | |
| Saab 340 | 9 | 1999 | 2010 |
Aeroméxico Connect and its predecessor, Aerolitoral, have never had an accident with loss of life, although it has had 6 accidents, with 2 hull losses.