During ANATO, JetSMART’s Victor Mejia Talks About The Airline’s Relationships With American Airlines, Indigo Partners

Low Cost Airline JetSMART continues to grow in Colombia, replacing the void left by the disappearance of Viva Air several years ago. The airline, with global headquarters in Santiago, Chile, is backed by US based Indigo Partners and American Airlines, fueling rapid growth in the country, serving the increasing demand for air travel by both Colombians and international travelers.

Finance Colombia was present during Vitrina Turistica 2025, the huge travel industry trade show put on in Bogotá by ANATO, the travel industry trade organization. During a presentation given by JetSmart executives outlining the airline’s growth and plans for Colombia, Finance Colombia Executive Editor Loren Moss was able to ask a few questions of  Chief Commercial Officer Victor Mejia. Colombia Country Manager Mario Garcia was also on hand. By clicking above, the reader can hear the original interview in Spanish.

Finance Colombia: Victor, very kind of you. Thank you for weighing in on this. My question is, I saw that when purchasing my ticket to fly here, I could now put my American Airlines AAdvantage loyalty program number into my JetSmart reservation. How has that reception been? And taking into account your alliance with American Airlines since you are growing internationally, can you grow to North America and more destinations in the Caribbean? Or would the strategy be to leave that to your partners and connect through them?

Victor Mejia: No, thank you for the question. Look, the truth is that to offer AAdvantage, AAdvantage miles for all JetSMART travelers so that they can accumulate them by buying tickets and continue flying with us, and then use their miles to redeem all the options that American Airlines has to visit in the world, it is a great benefit. We are very proud of being able to share and offer it to our travelers. So, we invite everyone to enter their AAdvantage number every time they buy a ticket on JetSMART, so they can receive the benefits of flying.

We will continue to expand our airline, mainly in Colombia; like the news we just saw, our Cali-San Andres flight. And we will continue to look for the opportunity to bring in air connectivity. American Airlines is our partner, we are there supporting each other through code share flights, and we will be bringing that to Colombia in the future. So no, definitely the options to provide international connectivity, either directly or through our alliance with American Airlines, will continue to be there.

Finance Colombia: And the importance of having Indigo Partners as an investor?

Victor Mejia: Yes well, Indigo Partners is our airline’s founding partner, they have more than 20 years of experience with the low-cost model around the world, and they are very tied to and very involved with the airline. We work hand in hand in all the management with Indigo. They also help us view the global perspective of aviation. And in the part of fleet acquisitions, which is why we can have the newest fleet in South America, we were recently recognized for that again, and continue to receive brand-new aircraft from the factory, Airbus A320 and A321. Those are some of the strengths of belonging to the Indigo Partners group.

JetSMART discusses the airline’s growth in Colombia

Ana: JetSMART’s commitment to connectivity and tourism in Colombia is undeniable. We are in this 44th edition of the ANATO Vitrina Turística 2025, which is the most important event of the sector in the country, and the best venue to deliver great news. Since it arrived in Colombia in March of last year, JetSMART has revolutionized the way Colombians travel, Smart model, with its ultra-low-cost model, where passengers pay only for what they need. Connecting more cities, facilitating access to flights through very low fares. Today it continues to expand its presence in the country, giving more Colombians the opportunity to fly in an affordable, efficient way and with the most modern fleet in South America, the youngest.

Today we will share with all of you the airline’s progress in Colombia, we will do a presentation, and so I invite Victor Mejia, JetSMART’s Chief Commercial Officer to provide all this information. So of course once again, we welcome Victor. Go ahead.

“And we have been serving the Colombian market since March of 2024. Yes, we have six international routes from Colombia.” – Victor Mejia

Victor Mejia: Thank you, Ana. Good morning everyone. It is a pleasure to be here again at Anato, sharing with you -there are some familiar faces from last year as well- the JetSMART news. This year we are also bringing good news, and we wanted to take advantage of the Vitrina Turística de Anato, what better place to do it, than to tell you how we did in this first year of operation? But also to bring good news, so I hope it will be to everyone’s liking. For those of you who we haven’t had the pleasure of knowing, or have not had the opportunity to get to know JetSMART, let me tell you a little bit about our airline.

JetSMART is owned by the Indigo Partners investment fund, a private investment fund based in Phoenix, Arizona, which has airlines all over the world in the ultra-low-cost model. One of these airlines, which may be familiar to you, is Volaris in Mexico, which is the number 1 or 2 airline in Mexico. You also have Frontier in the United States, there is also the Wizz Air airline in Europe, and Cebu Pacific in the Philippines, and for South America we took on the task of founding JetSMART, in 2016. The company started flying in July 2017, and since then we have been serving different countries in Latin America. And now we are going to tell you a little bit about how we’ve been expanding. So a bit like I was saying before, with the Indigo Partners group that has more than 20 years of experience in ultra-low-cost airlines around the world.

Also our mission; well we came here because we want to connect 100 million people. So far we are already 35, we are getting there, moving forward in the middle of a pandemic also, which was challenging for the whole sector, for all sectors I think. But well, for the aviation sector, it was especially challenging. But we are on that path, and as part of that path, we have opened operations in different countries in South America with our Smart model. It is an ultra-low-cost model that has been the fastest growing in the world in recent years; in Europe, it is already very mature, and in the United States as well. In South America, we have already been in different countries for several years with the low-cost model, which is very well known in Colombia.

There were important changes in the sector, we saw the opportunity, and that is why we are here, to serve by bringing back the low-cost model to Colombia. Our models, new airplanes, we are going to talk a little bit more about that. Our prices, as well, are low, so that people can travel a lot, can select what they want to customize in their trip, and what they want to pay for. Because the ticket they are going to buy with JetSMART, the lowest fare possible, is going to allow them to travel from point A to point B, and the passenger can customize their trip, choosing if they want luggage if they want a specific seat. It is a model that is a bit more transparent as well, that allows the passenger to not pay for what they do not need.

In our strategy, we also try to have routes, what we call Smart routes, which are routes that do not necessarily go to the big hubs that exist in the different countries, but that connect point-to-point cities that need air transportation, and that are not being served. So we have been adding routes between cities that did not normally have an air connectivity service. As for our fleet, well, in the year 2028, we will be reaching 124 aircraft. We currently have 44 aircraft in operation. The request was made in a historic aircraft order that we have made hand in hand with Indigo Partners and the other airlines of the group. They are already committed, they are already signed and purchased, so it is the most prominent aircraft reception process we have, and in permanent growth.

We have aircraft of the Airbus A320 and A321 family. Of A320 we have the A320neo fleet, and of A321 also neo, which is the most efficient aircraft available to date. We are the first operator in South America to have this type of aircraft. The interior of our aircraft they are brand new, they are efficient, with E-Leather seat technology, which is very comfortable and light. Part of our model is to be very cost-efficient to translate that cost-efficiency into pricing for consumers. We are committed to sustainability; our aircraft represent the diversity of the region; each aircraft has its own identity, an animal from the different countries where we operate. We work with different environmental conservation entities in different countries, and we are bringing that identity to the tails of the airplanes.

We are very proud to share with you a piece of news, a scoop from a couple of days ago, and that is that once again Ch-Aviation, which is an aviation institute that evaluates all the fleets around the world, has recognized and verified that we have the newest airplane fleet in South America, once again for the year 2025. This is a product of the fact that, as I shared with you before, we are constantly receiving new aircraft from the Airbus factory, so this is going to be something that we believe we will be maintaining for some time because these aircraft will continue to arrive every year.

Also one of our partners, a minority shareholder of the company but also a commercial ally, is American Airlines. We have a very broad commercial alliance that involves code-share flights, which we do not have in Colombia yet, but they will come and we will be sharing them with you as soon as they do. But we do have them in other countries in South America. Also, the frequent flyer program, AAdvantage, in which today, AAdvantage frequent flyer program members can earn miles when they buy tickets on JetSMART, and fly with JetSMART. And you can redeem those miles in America and fly all over the world. So it’s a very, very important partner.

As I was sharing with you, in 2017 we started flying, and we took on the task of bringing air connectivity to all of South America. Currently, we serve South America with 81 routes, we serve 8 countries, and we have domestic operations in 4 countries. The first one we started in Chile in 2017, later we went to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and we have served the entire Argentine domestic since 2019. Later in the pandemic, since we were all cooped up at home, we got creative and decided to open in Peru, so we started operating in Peru. And last year, finally, with great pleasure for many of us who have a past linked to Colombia, we arrived in Colombia.

And we have been serving the Colombian market since March of 2024. Yes, we have six international routes from Colombia. And for this, we are going to talk a little bit more about our arrival in Colombia and how we have been doing so far, what we have been up to this last year, so I want to pass the floor to Mario Garcia, our Country Manager here at JetSMART in Colombia. So, Mario, the microphone is yours.

Mario Garcia: Good morning. I’m very pleased to be here and with a full house. I would like to tell you a bit, after what Victor explained to us, about what has been done throughout South America, and what we have done in Colombia. In Colombia, out of those 44 airplanes, we have 8 airplanes operating, 320, and we have these six international routes. We connect Cartagena, Medellín, Cali, Bogotá, with Santiago, Lima and Antofagasta. It has been a very fluid and year-round operation. And now to talk a bit about domestic flights. We started operating on March 14 of last year, and we already have, with what we are going to announce now, 19 domestic routes; we serve 10 cities; last year we flew two and a half million people; we had close to 14,000 operations; 14,000 take-offs in 9 months.

That incorporation of airplanes was practically one airplane per month, a very accelerated growth, and in order to bring airplanes and air travel closer to Colombia. Today we have one of the highest per capita flight averages in the region; 0.8 flights per person, and we want to be a support for more Colombians to fly and get closer to airplanes. Since we have been flying, 38% of passengers have flown in a plane for the first time with us.

On connectivity with the San Andrés Archipelago

Audience member: I would also like to ask you, we know that yesterday you met with (San Andrés & {Profidencia) Governor Nicolas Gallardo. What other things could you anticipate for us (from the San Andrés Archipelago)? What other, let’s say, destinations are also being explored to connect San Andres, both nationally and internationally? Thank you.

Victor Mejia: Thank you for your questions. We are very pleased with the performance of this Medellín -San Andres route. We had a very good reception from the public, not only in Medellín, but we also made international connectivity. The idea is that both from Medellín and from the new route we are announcing now, Cali-San Andres, there will be international connectivity. To Cali, we fly Santiago-Cali and Antofagasta-Cali. We are the only ones flying those direct flights to the city of Cali, and the idea is to also use this as a connection point to the San Andres island. Our purpose for the time being is to continue gathering more opportunities.

Hopefully, we can turn these four frequencies into more, if we have the reception we expect from the public, and through that, we can make the flight to the island from different points more viable. So let’s continue working hand in hand, it is truly a pleasure to receive the support of both the local media and the government, and with all the actors and tour operators of the island. We will be bringing you international connectivity through the two points of  Medellín and Cali.