State airline Mexicana de Aviación has placed an order for 20 E2 jets with Embraer, the Brazilian planemaker announced. The agreement foresees the delivery of 10 E190-E2 and 10 E195-E2 from the second quarter of 2025.
The aircraft will be configured with 108 seats (E190-E2) and 132 seats (E195-E2), a spacious layout compared to the capacity of the two models.
“We welcome Mexicana to the E2 family, the first E2 operator in Mexico. Seeing the success and rapid growth Mexicana has achieved since it restarted operations in December 2023 has been remarkable. The airline is already flying to 18 destinations, and has transported more than 115,000 passengers, accumulating more than 3,280 flight hours in this short period,” said Priscilla Doro Solymossy, Vice President of Sales & Marketing at Embraer Commercial Aviation for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Expected order
The order for Brazilian jets had been considered by the Mexican press for some time. Current president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has just elected his successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, had revealed in March that he would sign an agreement for 20 aircraft by October, when his term ends.
Weeks earlier, journalist Darío Celis Estrada, from El Heraldo de Mexico, revealed firsthand that the Mexican government had reached an agreement with Embraer to receive 10 jets from May 2025.
Mexicana was rescued by López Obrador’s left-wing government in August 2023, 13 years after going bankrupt. The plan is to offer flights with lower prices than those charged by the country’s private airlines such as Aeroméxico, Viva Aerobus and Volaris.
The new Mexicana, however, ran into difficulties in assembling its fleet of aircraft.
To fulfill the promise of its debut in service last December, its executives closed a wet-leasing agreement for ERJ 145 jets in addition to receiving three Boeing 737s from the Mexican Air Force.
Currently, the state carrier only has five jets.