Spain’s flagship Iberia will double its frequencies between Madrid and Bogotá starting February 1, 2022, and with an additional daily flight, expects to exceed passenger capacity of pre-pandemic levels. The announcement by the Barajas Airport-based airline points to a major increase in the numbers of business and leisure travelers expected on a route that will be operated by its “most advanced and sustainable” aircraft, the Airbus A350 with capacity for 348 passengers: 31 in Business class, 24 in its new Premium Economy cabin and 293 in Economy class.
In December, Iberia will resume flights to Cali, Colombia, with three weekly frequencies from Madrid. Within Colombia, Iberia codeshares to reach 12 destinations: Armenia, Barranquilla, Bucaramanga, Cartagena, Cúcuta, Leticia, Medellín, Montería, Pereira, San Andrés, Santa Marta and Yopal. “We celebrate 75 years flying to Latin America, and betting on this region, in good times and not so good ones. Colombia is a market of enormous importance for us, where we have maintained connectivity throughout the pandemic. Now our goal is to stimulate traffic to Europe by recovering the same capacity that we offered before COVID,” remarked Iberia’s commercial director Maria Jesús López-Solás to aviation insiders Simple Flying.
With the greater connectivity between Colombia and Spain in 2022, Avianca also announced its return to London’s Heathrow from March 27, 2022, with its daily Dreamliner B-787 service. In December, 2020, Avianca suspended its London flight after the Colombian government closed all direct air connectivity with the UK to contain the spread of the Alpha-variant. The original 10-day suspension was extended all of this year as a result of the UK placing Colombia on its travel “red list” of barred nations.
