I had the opportunity of travelling on one of AV‘s refurbished A320 aircrafts on a regional flight from MEX to SJO today.

I had booked a cheapish S size ticket, yet could snatch a Premium seat in row 3 after being assigned a random seat in the very back of the plane at check-in. Not sure, if this is an IT glitch, but at USD 35.00 the upsell to Premium was a mere USD 5.00 more expensive than to the 3-3 configured Plus seats.

I must say that, even if it a shame that AV are scrapping C class across their American services and assumingly downgrade all these routes to narrow bodies, the Premium seat is quite comfortable as it widens out towards the fix divider in the middle. Leg room and recline are equally okay and not worse than e.g. LA (to name a regional competitor) and their Y+ product. However, it was underwhelming that the power plugs in the divider area were not working.

Service consisted of a sandwich of decent size, a bag of yucca crisps and a choice of water, coffee or tea. For the length of the flight, this was perfectly acceptable. The sandwich was actually tastier and fresher than the horrendous sour dough bricks that LH used to hand out on their European short hauls, back in the days when they still had a free food offering.

Having said this, for longer flights, like BOG to LAX, JFK, SCL, GRU, EZE or MVD, such limited food and especially beverage is not adequate in my opinion, because AV‘s original prices for their L size tickets - or whatever they call them - are not necessarily a bargain. Here, I would really like them to up their game, although seeing that it is all one giant cabin with no real distinction other than „class“ markers on the overhead bins, a differentiated service concept does not seem to be in AV‘s books; at least not until a new owner and/or CEO takes over…

All in all, I really expected worse, but I think that AV are now at the edge of what is tolerable for a (former) flagship carrier and an airline (still) part of an important alliance.

Let‘s see how things turn out for them…



AV regional catering on AV 633 MEX - SJO (coffee not shown)