Does AA reaccommodate or interline with VB VivaAerobus?
 

Never heard of VivaAerobus before but they seem to run nonstops between NYC and MEX. Does AA reaccommodate or interline on them?

VB is a fairly large Mexican LCC. Flown them before, it's pretty much what you'd expect - for what I paid (5% of what AA wanted that time), I was happy. According to EF, AA does not interline with them.

Why not go for AM or DL?

On this route, DL/AM usually price exponentially higher than VB, AA, and even UA out of EWR for their nonstops. Makes sense since AM pretty much has a monopoly on Mexican based corporate travel and this is a decently heavy business route compared to most out of Mexico. But I don’t think VB interlines with AA, but I’ve taken that non-stop from JFK before and as long as you temper your expectations, you’ll be fine.

For sure AM dominates. I misunderstood the question. I thought OP was curious about an AA ticket that went bad, not the other way around. The red eye return to JFK is a bit brutal in my opinion.

The flight down to MEX (AA2995) is great with a 7pm departure and arriving usually 10-10:30pm, so still not too late. Agree the return (AA2996) is a nightmare flight and honestly, if I’m sticking with AA, I usually book a 1 stop via MIA or DFW rather than take that.

The problem is it that burns a whole day and the banks don't work for the latest DFW flight. The afternoon ex-MIA banks really baffle me for my needs. IMO AA seems to be retreating ex-MEX as well (not that they ever had a dominant position). LAX gets axed after getting upgauged to a 738.

I booked an almost last -minute ticket from NY to MEX in June, and AA nonstop was hundreds of dollars cheaper than any other option. I don't know if that's a reflection of general demand for them on this route, but it was certainly notable.

I've looked at the same route more recently for travel in the fall, and there doesn't seem to be the same price differential. But I'll keep an eye out.

AA's strategy in NY, as has been discussed at length in numerous threads, is ... something else

Having just visited MEX arriving on AA and departing on BA, the airport experience is dreadful.

The Admirals Club is claustrophobic, with a low ceiling, bad lighting and no natural light. It’s filled with tired looking old furniture which seems reminiscent of a sort of sell-off of surplus unwanted office furniture, and there’s too much furniture so it’s crowded.

The food is lackluster at best and nasty at worst. What’s with all the tired sandwiches, dubious looking soups and stale tasting fried items? The only edible things I found were raw carrot, celery, cucumber and jicama sticks and some plain pecan nuts.

If you think the lounge is bad, just wait for the rest of the terminal! There don’t seem to be many flight information screens anywhere, and the gate areas are so small there’s no space for any seats, just cordoned off lines for queuing to get on the plane.

Was it always this bad? Or did Mexicana have their own nicer OneWorld lounge before they went bankrupt?

The airport is significantly capacity constrained and it has been a point of contention for years. Someone can give you a better history, but I understand that there has not been much investment as the airport as a whole needs a major overhaul or a new airport needs to be built. The current administration just put a bandaid on it by opening a new national airport.

They were supposed to replace MEX with the new state of the art Texcoco airport. Unfortunately, the president decided to cancel it and instead built a Tokyo Narita/Washington Dulles/Montreal Mirabel equivalent unwanted airport, leaving old, dumpy MEX as the main airport.

All around awful.

If you're in a reaccomodation situation, I'm sure AA would put you on AM if that was needed.

Yep this is the issue; even taking a brutal 5am flight ex-MEX via DFW or MIA, the earliest you’ll get into NYC is 4:30pm, so for me if I have to be in the office, I’ll take the horrible red eye, but if not, I’ll stick to the 1 stop. I do hope this route does survive…like others have said it’s generally way cheaper than the other nonstop options (not including VB), and it was only started Nov ‘22.

Funny enough, the Texcoco airport isn’t exactly close either. And the Felipe Angeles airport is comically far and a perfect example of a white elephant project. It’s no wonder barely anyone wants to fly there (sans the army controled Mexicana 2.0, which opens up another whole can of worms) and with the the slot controls at MEX, I don’t see much improvement anytime soon in one’s experience flying into and out of North Americas biggest city.

It isn't close, but it wasn't super far away from the current MEX. I believe it was 3-4 miles further, which didn't seem like that much of a concession to have a proper, modern airport. (it's overflown almost immediately after departure from the current MEX). Agree on Felipe Angeles, it's only saving grace is that they gave up on trying to make Toluca work as a viable primary airport for CDMX.

The worst part of the cancelation of the Texcoco airport is that they spent a fortune on it, only to get nothing in return. The blown cost on Texcoco was almost what it took to completely redo LGA. Instead, 6+ billion USD later, taxpayers there have NLU in one hand, and their schlongs in the other.

Yeah when I think of it Texcoco is not too far from most central and popular neighborhoods in CDMX, and would’ve been connected to the metro system with a spur off of línea B. But chilangos are very spoiled with how close their current (and unfortunately unsustainable) airport is to most neighborhoods (without traffic it literally takes 15 mins to get from the airport to condesa in a $10 Uber), hence the handwringing lol.

The Texcoco airport is genuinely such a sad story. The site is ecologically important swampy bog land (similar to Xochimilco) and also had quite a few indigenous communities, which led to pretty lound mass protests. Yet it was still chosen and construction moved along full steam, with, like you said, billions spent. And then the govt had a change of heart and decided to “listen” to the protesters and pull the rug under the project. However, billions were spent, and to make it worse, the area was still destroyed and the communities were still displaced. So you pretry much get all the negatives that come with building a massive new airport but not the actual airport itself. You can see the site from google maps, or flying out of MEX, and you can see the environmental destruction that led to nothing clearly. Genuinely heartbreaking but also a very good lesson on how not to do infrastructure projects and that sometimes it’s ok to reject the sunk cost fallacy.
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