Starting June 6, the U.S. airline will resume flights to Juan Santamaria and Daniel Oduber Quiros international airports, offering a daily route from Houston, Texas to San Jose and Liberia, as well as a weekly flight from Baltimore, Maryland to Guanacaste.
There are nine airlines connecting our country with the U.S., our main tourist source market: Delta Airlines, United Airlines, Alaska, American Airlines, JetBlue, Spirit, Sun Country, Frontier (as of July 1) and Southwest (as of June 6), informed the Costa Rican Tourism Institute.
After authorities submitted the biosecurity protocols, the Oscar Romero International Airport is scheduled to resume operations on September 4.
The plan of the Autonomous Executive Port Commission (CEPA) is that as of Friday September 4, the skies of El Salvador will be open for connecting flights and as of September 19 for commercial passenger flights.
After having carried out the adaptation work on its infrastructure, it reopened the San José Port aerodrome, in Escuintla, which will be used initially for private flights.
The expectation of the authorities is that in addition to private flights that can already be operated in the air terminal located in the Pacific, commercial flights will be scheduled in the future.
In 2016 the number of passengers who flew from one destination to another within the country exceeded 265 thousand, registering an increase of 27% compared to 2015.
Favored by the poor state of the road infrastructure, the domestic air market continues to record significant growth rates. Figures from the General Directorate of Civil Aviation indicate that in 2016 alone 265,500 passengers traveled on domestic flights.
In a growing market, 16 commercial air companies operate an average of four to five corporate flights a day.
Providing a flight with value added services, such as alliances with hotels and transport services in the areas surrounding airports is one of the elements with which airlines that offer charter flights to businesses and tourists are aiming to differentiate themselves.
Nature Air has announced that it will now fly twice daily between Costa Rica and Nicaragua, in order to meet the growing demand on that route.
The high demand of passengers between Nicaragua and Costa Rica has encouraged the airline Nature Air to raise the number of daily flights between San Jose and Managua to two (one in the day and one at night).
Between 6 pm and 9 pm at the Tobias Bolanos Airport can operate domestic flights under the responsibility of the pilots, as there will be no service tower controller.
The runway of the airport will be enabled as of 1. December, 6 pm to 9 pm, for local tourist flights, and from 9 pm to 6 am for ambulance flights.
The measure corresponds to the pressure from tourism entrepreneurs, who were seriously affected by the closure of night operations in October. See "Costa Rica: Opposition to Airport Curfew".
A company founded with Panamanian capital, led by tourism entrepreneurs, has started offering private flights on the isthmus, Mexico, northern South America and the Caribbean.
Fly Executive has started operations in Panama offering private flights with a new fleet of jets with a base of operations at the airport Marcos A. Gelabert, in Albrook.
Increased air connectivity in the country is one of the factors explaining the reduction of passengers arriving in the country from aboard on charter flights, going from 136,000 in 2012 to 82,000 in 2013.
According to the Tourism Authority of Panama (ATP) figures for this year are not yet available, but a similar decline is expected. The decrease in passengers traveling on charter flights is due to the supply of flights having incorporated more scheduled flights, which experienced a 4% increase in the number of passengers between January and October this year.
It is becoming increasingly common for executives to travel on private planes.
According to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, the airports Juan Santamaría, Daniel Oduber (Liberia), Tobias Bolanos (Pavas) and Limon reported a total of 5721 flights by private aircraft (helicopters, planes or jets) in the first six months of the year , which is 10% higher than in the same period in 2010.
More austere budgets have reduced corporate demand for traveling by plane.
In the local region, the company TACA registered a 27% decrease in the sector of business travel.
The journalists Guadalupe Hernández and Daniel Choto write for Elsalvador.com: "As an answer to the need of corporations to save, TACA has implemented a change in the structure of prices.