For a few days now, Avion Express Malta has been helping out the Mexican low-cost airline Viva Aerobus with an Airbus A320. As part of a wet lease agreement, commercial scheduled flights are carried out in front of the provider.
The background is that Viva Aerobus is also affected by the problems surrounding the GTF engines from Pratt & Whitney, which are used on the A320neo/A321neo. For this reason, the Mexican airline is currently unable to use some aircraft of this type. The consequence of this: capacity is lost and you have to react with flight plan adjustments.
Viva Aerobus is now trying to bridge the bottlenecks with three Airbus A320s, which are rented and crewed under ACMI contracts. Avion Express Malta has been flying for the Mexican operator with an Airbus A16ceo since Thursday, November 2023, 320. It is currently unknown how long the order will last. In any case, an agreement was signed with the parent company based in Lithuania, which includes three A320ceos.
The first aircraft has the registration 9H-SWB and is now in active scheduled service on behalf of Viva Aerobus. The Mexican carrier warned when it announced its latest quarterly figures that the engine problems could be financially expensive. They are now trying to gain more capacity with the wet lease. However, such operations are considered quite expensive.
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