Mexico halts Azteca airline on safety concerns

[Midnight Mike]

UPDATE 4-Mexico halts Azteca airline on safety concerns
Mon Mar 26, 2007 7:57 PM ET

(Adds company not available to comment, Web site down)

By Tomas Sarmiento and Gunther Hamm

MEXICO CITY, March 26 (Reuters) - Mexico suspended flights of Lineas Aereas Azteca on Monday because of safety concerns and financial problems, leaving thousands of passengers with unusable tickets.

The government shut down the airline and gave it 90 days to solve its problems, transportation officials said. Azteca flies to Los Angeles and several Mexican cities.

"The company has problems in nearly all areas: its administrative, financial and technical segments are all very deteriorated," said Mexico's civil aeronautics head Gilberto Lopez.

Lopez told a news conference that most troubling were concerns about plane maintenance and the quality of training for technical staff.

Azteca has piled up debt with Mexico City's airport and its airplane lessor. A lessor temporarily seized one of Azteca's planes last month in the United States.

Bavaria International Aircraft Leasing says on its Web site that it leases to Azteca, but it was not clear on Monday if the seized plane had been leased from Bavaria.

Azteca was not available to comment.

The suspension of flights affects up to 25,000 tickets, said Antonio Morales de la Pena, head of consumer watchdog agency Profeco.

On Monday night, the airline's Web site, http://aazteca.com.mx/, was not accessible.

Morales said the airline would have to reimburse customers and called on other carriers to offer lower fares to affected travelers.

Azteca's grounding comes days before Mexico's week-long Easter holiday, one of the year's busiest periods for air travel.

The airline flies to 19 Mexican destinations, including Mexico City and the Caribbean beach resort of Cancun. But Lopez said it was authorized to fly 50 routes.

The airline has only been using 20 of its authorized routes, including Los Angeles.

Five of Lineas Aereas Azteca's nine planes were out of day-to-day service when the suspension was announced.

About 113,000 passengers flew on Azteca in January and February, equivalent to 2.3 percent of total traffic in Mexico. The airline has lost about half its market share in six months.

[T-Bird76]

Man first it was Aero California now them! That blows!

[Nonstop2AUH]

Interesting, I feel bad for them but I also know that Mexico is proud of its safety record in recent years and there has been a proliferation of startup airlines. It doesn't want to be lumped in with "3rd world countries" that have serious issues, so I am sure their authorities are being extra cautious.

[nwafan20]

What was the last major airline to get grounded on safety concerns? ValuJet?

[JetBlueAirwaysFan]

Well, ValuJet still flies today...under the name AirTran.

[nwafan20]

it was still grounded....

Heck, it still flew under Valujet after the un-grounding until it finally went under and was eaten up by AirTran.

It's not as simple as "it's still flying under the AirTran name", because it's not. It was merged into AirTran. The airline AirTran existed before Valujet went under.

[JetBlueAirwaysFan]

I thought ValuJet helped form AirTran.

[nwafan20]

It helped form the NEW AirTran, but the original AirTran was a small airline in Florida.

They then absorbed ValuJet, kept the name AirTran and formed a holding company.

It is sort of like US Airways/America West (minus the fall of ValuJet because of the crash). US Airways existed before, and after merging with America West, they are still US Airways.

Back to the original question, was ValuJet the last MAJOR airline to be fully grounded due to safety concerns?

[Midnight Mike]

What was the last major airline to get grounded on safety concerns? ValuJet?

Kiwi a while ago was grounded due to safety concerns, actually, I think it was was a paperwork problem.

Southeast airlines had some problems, but, went bankrupt before the problems came out.

Years ago Alaska was having trouble with their MD80 maintainence, this came out after the loss of a MD80 aircraft.

Korean Airlines was in danger of being kicked out of several countries due to their high accident rate.

[nwafan20]

Thanks Mike!

[T-Bird76]

It helped form the NEW AirTran, but the original AirTran was a small airline in Florida.

They then absorbed ValuJet, kept the name AirTran and formed a holding company.

It is sort of like US Airways/America West (minus the fall of ValuJet because of the crash). US Airways existed before, and after merging with America West, they are still US Airways.

Back to the original question, was ValuJet the last MAJOR airline to be fully grounded due to safety concerns?

Wrong on all accounts....

Valujet was never a major airline.

Valujet bought out AirTran and kept the AirTran name to distance itself from the crash.

America West bought out U.S Airways and kept the U.S Airways name. For the last time U.S Airways in no way shape or form merged with HP.

[nwafan20]

I'm sorry, I thought ValuJet was considered a major, my mistake.
I know that America West bought out US Airways, I was just trying to simplify it to explain, although I never knew ValuJet bought out AirTran.

But the concept was similar, was it not?

[Matt Molnar]

You must have to have some wretched planes to get grounded in Mexico.

Or maybe they just stopped bribing the proper people.

[T-Bird76]

I'm sorry, I thought ValuJet was considered a major, my mistake.
I know that America West bought out US Airways, I was just trying to simplify it to explain, although I never knew ValuJet bought out AirTran.

But the concept was similar, was it not?

Not entirely. AirTran wasn't in Chap 11 or on the verge of shutting down. US had about two months of life left in them before they would have shut down. In the case of Valujet, the Critter had hundreds of millions in cash allowing them to buy AirTran a solvent company. HP was able to buy US via loans they arranged with various parties. HP bought most of US's asset's in court for a song, the situation was very similar to AA buying out TWA, with the exception AA kept the AA name and HP didn't keep their name.