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