Mexican Low-Cost Airline Volaris Is Outsmarting Rivals, One Bus at a Time

When travelers arrive at a bus station in Mexico, they sometimes receive a targeted ad on their smartphone, asking if they might prefer flying over a long, cramped bus trip. These ads come from Volaris, Mexico's decade-old discount airline, a scrappy upstart with a model similar to Spirit Airlines, Ryanair, and EasyJet. Volaris is among the world's fastest growing airlines, and while there are many reasons for its success, one stands out  — Volaris has persuaded consumers there's a more efficient way to travel than by bus. "The bus market is about 100 times bigger than the air market," Holger Blankenstein, the airline's chief commericial officer, said in an interview. "We said, 'We needed to get people off of buses and onto planes.' The way to do that is to lower fares." Internationally, Volaris has kept a low profile, but that should change. The U.S. and Mexico this month enacted a new aviation agreement, allowing more airlines to add cross-border flights. Volaris, whic