The question still is: How many? What percentage of passengers arriving into SDQ are bussed to PC?
- Thread starter MiamiDRGuy
- Start date
ARAJET
The answer is that they are a new business trying to find their way. They have backers with deep pockets and a management team who have pulled this off before. They seem to be doing OK in Santo Domingo but I suspect that when they start operating in Punta cana they will start to see higher profits and margins from those routes. And this will over time encourage them to use more of their aircraft there than in SDQ. Added to this the point that has been made that PUJ is a far better run airport than SDQ and I can see the pull will be strong.
Their primary focus is on making money. If PUJ is more lucrative then that's where they will go.
My tenant was one of Arajets senior managers and he left a few months ago telling me he couldn't stand it any more everything was way more difficult here than he could have imagined in his worst nightmare. And he was a guy with many many years of aviation experience. So I don't think it's all super rosy for them.
The one thing we can always count on is that things are seldom as they seem to be.
It still highly depends on what percentage of their currently arriving passengers are going to PC. I'm sure there are some, but how many? I've seen this before. A low-cost airline goes into a very lucrative route and the the major players slash their prices and put them out of business. As mentioned, many of the carriers going into PUJ now have package deals. Arajet will have to do the same to even hope to compete.
they send only 3 buses that I think the capacity must be around 45 seats each that will be 135 seats and between 6 and 7 airplanes arriving at the same time with capacity of 1,323 seats.
Exactly, they sell their own packages, themself fill their own airplanes, and also has the capacity to place in one single flight over 350 seats doubling Arajet capacity and can drop the prices, and the plus of flying here from their Hubs that make them stronger. I'm waiting to see what they will finally do.
Riva ,thank you for always giving us valuable, informative information. Does a Dominican passport holder need a visa to go to Brazil?
Arajet accounts for 2% of all tourists that visited the DR in 2023, but the goal is to increase to 10%. Most had to be from Central aand South America. I don’t know what percentage is bussed to PC, but most of those probably vacationed in PC either directly or first in SD and then in PC. Many of those that took a bus to SD couldn’t had taken an Arajet rented bus since I think they started that service this year.
For the record, he’s been “retired” for a while.
PS. Retired is in quotes because when a person is essentially a workaholic, retirement is relative. He has proven to be a serious Dominican budinessman. Just compare eith how many foreigners have started businesses in the DR with a Dominican partner and eventually the Dominican partner does some type of scam that essentislly destroys the business. Quite a few have complainted in DR1 about going through things like that with some business attempt in the DR.
There is an element many of those other low-cost carriers didn’t had unlike Arajet, a lot of money is marked to be spent on Arajet. That airline isn’t “a normal start up.” Those other players are able to get away with that because the airline they are targetting doesn’t have enough money to withstand their tactic of lowering prices to essentially make every flight a loss. Even the big players will do that for X amount of time and not indefinitely due to costs and the airline they are targetting needs to have enough cash to withstand that until the big players can’t continue at a loss and begin to increase their prices again.
So, only about 10% of their passengers go on to PC? If they move to PC, they'll lose 90% of their revenue. What about all the passengers that are headed south to Central and South America? They're not going to drive to PUJ to get there.
You have to remember, for the major carriers, PUJ is just one of thousands of flights. They can afford to operate at break-even or a slight loss forever if they have to.
If a high percentage of their passengers go to PC, the move might make sense. From what I've read, there's a lot of Dominicans flying south. They sure won't be happy. I doubt they'll drive to PC to get a flight to Central or South America(?).
For sure a lot Dominicans wont go Punta Cana to take a flight including me, I only go to Punta Cana if I do not have options from Santo Domingo, If they left SDQ I will use Wingo, Copa and Avianca again from SDQ.
Wingo started flying to Punta Cana with cheap flights and the majority of Dominicans satayed with their departs from SDQ So moving to PUJ as I said above will have Dominicans out of statistic. for May 2024 PUJ departures with Dominicans was only 4,000 while departures with Dominicans from SDQ was 41,000. That amount do not include Dominicans living aboard.
That's a silly argument. It's not like they are dealing with commuters who need to make the same journey over and over again. A lot of people who travel with them come once and won't come again.
Yes, also they have passenger in transit, those one do not matter SDQ or PUJ, what really matter its the % of Dominicans and who has as final destination Dominican Republic. The airlines that fly to Punta Cana has contracts with sellers that prepaid very big amount of rooms and some other has their own vacations departments like Air Canada, Sunwing and air transat just to mention some of them. They said will start flights in November so Im wondering how will work things there.
I'm just using the percentage that was posted. Do you have a better one? What are the 90% of passengers that are not going to PC going to do if Arajet is no longer based in SDQ?