Latin American airline company Abra Group has requested approval to incorporate Chilean low-cost carrier SKY Airline, while also signalling intention to retain SKY’s brand identity.
That fits the pattern of Abra’s other member carriers – including Colombia’s Avianca, Brazil’s Gol and Spanish wet-lease specialist Wamos Air – all of which have maintained distinct outward-facing brands and separate operations.
Abra chief executive Adrian Neuhauser said in a 11 November social media post that the group had “submitted to the competition authorities” a request to move forward with its proposed acquisition of SKY.
“Today, we took an important step forward in our strategy to keep strengthening connectivity across Latin America — within the region and with the rest of the world,” he says.
The companies say they have ”an agreement-in-principle to advance this transaction”, though they have yet to complete “definitive documentation” and meet other closing conditions.
The incorporation request is pending relevant regulatory approvals. Meanwhile, all of the group’s airlines will continue operating “completely independently”, Neuhauser says.
Pulling SKY Airline into Abra Group would fill in certain sections of the map for the airline group, establishing a greater foothold in Chile and Peru, while also providing access to a relatively young fleet of single-aisle Airbus jets.
SKY Airline, founded in 2001, is headquartered in Santiago, Chile, and operates a Peruvian subsidiary called Sky Airline Peru. The airline’s network covers 56 routes to 45 cities in the Americas.
It claims to maintain roughly 20% of Chile’s domestic market share and about 6% of the country’s international market.
SKY Airline Peru, on the other hand, maintains about 17% of Peru’s domestic market share and 9% of the international market.
Currently operating 36 Airbus A320neo-family jets, SKY Airline also holds orders for 10 A321XLR aircraft and expects to become the first Latin American operator of the long-range narrowbody type in 2026.
Francisco Raddatz, Abra’s senior vice-president of fleet and procurement, told FlightGlobal last week that the company sees “different utilities across the group” for the A321XLR, with potential operations out of Brazil, Chile and Central America.
Raddatz hints that Abra Group has interest in the A321XLR beyond the 10-strong orderbook held by SKY Airline.
“We have flexibility in our Airbus orderbook to eventually convert some aircraft to XLRs, but that is not yet defined,” he says. “It’s an aircraft that provides you range close to a widebody, but with the gauge of a narrowbody, so you clearly can get access to thinner markets… I believe it could be a good fit, but it’s not something we have defined yet.”
SKY Airline Peru CEO Jose Raul Vargas told FlightGlobal at the ALTA forum in Lima last month that the carrier expects to take delivery of its first A321XLR late next year.
In terms of how those latest-generation narrowbodies will be deployed, Vargas says that SKY Airline is looking at a potential route between Santiago and Miami.
“We also are thinking to use Lima as a hub, connecting passengers from Santiago, Buenos Aires and so on – maybe to New York, maybe to Los Angeles,” he says. “We have all the performance studies; we are capable of doing that and maybe who knows, flying to Europe from Brazil. There are many possibilities.”
In the bigger picture, Abra Group is angling to compete head-to-head with LATAM Airlines Group, the region’s most-dominant entity.
