Interjet

If you stood at the fence in Mexico City, Cancún or Miami in the 2010s, you could hardly miss Interjet. In a few years the airline grew into one of Mexico’s big names, flew the Sukhoi Superjet 100 as the only carrier in North America – and vanished almost overnight at the end of 2020. For spotters, Interjet is now an archive topic: this page helps you assign old photos correctly, understand the fleet and put the history in context.

Interjet at a glance

Interjet was a Mexican airline that officially operated as ABC Aerolíneas S.A. de C.V. and was headquartered in Mexico City. Behind it stood the Grupo Alemán, a business group around the Alemán family. Interjet carried out its first flight on December 1, 2005 – with a single Airbus A320. The starting point was not the overloaded capital airport but Toluca, west of Mexico City.

The idea: cheap domestic flights, but without the feeling of being squeezed into a budget carrier. Interjet sold tickets at low prices but gave passengers more seat pitch than usual. The A320 had 150 seats where other airlines fit significantly more. Over time this became a hybrid model: low base fares, plus extras for a fee and a more generous baggage rule than at classic budget airlines. Even surfboards flew domestically at no extra charge.

Interjet did not belong to any alliance. At the end of 2020 the airline ceased flight operations after years of financial problems. Since April 2023 it has been declared bankrupt by a court.

The history in stages

In just 15 years Interjet went through a complete life cycle: from the start with a single aircraft in Toluca, through the rise to an airline with destinations across the Americas, to standstill.

The move to Mexico City is remarkable: Mexico City Airport was already heavily utilized back then, and slots were scarce. When Aero California ceased operations in 2008, capacity became available – and Interjet seized it. That put the airline in direct competition with Aeroméxico and the then Mexicana de Aviación.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code 4O: appeared in the flight number, on tickets and on departures boards. The “O” is a letter – if you search old schedules for “40”, you find nothing.
• ICAO code AIJ: used by air traffic control in the flight plan; in tracker archives Interjet appears under AIJ.
• Callsign ABC AEROLINEAS: From August 2012, Interjet no longer identified itself on the radio with the brand name but with the name of the operating company – before that, “INTERJET” was customary.

The fleet: A320 family plus Superjet

Interjet relied on Airbus from the start. The Airbus A320 was the backbone of the fleet, and from the mid-2010s larger and more modern variants were added. Alongside stood an exotic that made Interjet known among spotters: the Sukhoi Superjet 100.

Type	Seats	Period	Spotter tip
Airbus A320-200	150	2005–2020	The airline’s workhorse, few seats for an A320
Airbus A321-200	n/a	from 2016	Stretched version with a longer fuselage
Airbus A320neo	n/a	from 2017	Big engines, Sharklets
Airbus A321neo	n/a	from 2018	Largest type in the fleet
Sukhoi Superjet 100-95	93	2013–2020	Only operator in North America

In early 2020 the fleet comprised, according to widespread reports, around 66 A320-family aircraft and about 20 Superjets. That number is deceptive, however: some Superjets had long been on the ground as spare-parts donors, and from spring 2020 lessors took back a considerable part of the Airbus fleet. The manufacturer of the Airbus types was Airbus; the neo variants A320neo and A321neo were among the airline’s youngest aircraft.

The Superjet chapter

The Sukhoi Superjet 100 is a regional jet of Russian production that was marketed in the West through the joint venture SuperJet International – a joint venture of Sukhoi and Italy’s Alenia Aermacchi, which today belongs to Leonardo. Sukhoi’s civil division is now part of the United Aircraft Corporation.

Interjet decided on the Superjet in the early 2010s. According to media reports, the jet was available much more cheaply than comparable models from the established regional jet manufacturers. In the end there were 20 firm orders plus options. SuperJet International handed over the first aircraft at the Paris Air Show in June 2013 – making Interjet the first Western customer to actually take delivery of the type. The cabin came from the design studio Pininfarina, and the seating comprised 93 seats with generous pitch, in keeping with the brand promise. Painting, outfitting and acceptance took place at SuperJet International in Venice. On September 18, 2013 the first two Superjets entered scheduled service.

In everyday operation, the Superjet became a problem for Interjet. Spare parts and maintenance were harder to organize than for the Airbus fleet, and in 2018 Bloomberg reported that several Superjets had been cannibalized for parts – Interjet disputed this at the time. In early 2020 the airline announced it would phase the type out. In November 2020, according to reports, only four of 22 Superjets were still in service.

For spotters, exactly that is the appeal: a Superjet in Interjet colors over Mexico was an unusual subject in its day, and today it is a true archive piece. If you have such a photo, it is worth recording the registration and date cleanly. How rare such a shot is, you can gauge with the article How rare is my sighting?.

How to recognize Interjet

Typical was the lowercase titles “interjet” on a mostly white fuselage. Because the airline has not flown since the end of 2020, you will only find it in older photos – but a simple checklist helps there.

Mexican airliners carry registrations with the prefix XA-, and that applies to the competition as well. The prefix alone therefore proves nothing – only the complete entry in the register or in a fleet list clarifies which aircraft you had in front of the lens. More on this is explained in Understanding aircraft registrations.

A320 or A320neo? Determining the generation

Interjet flew both generations of the A320 family. When sorting old photos, this is the most common source of error.

• Engines: The neo variants have significantly larger engines with a bigger diameter that reach almost to the ground.
• Wingtips: Neos always carry Sharklets; older A320s may have small wingtip fences or retrofitted Sharklets.
• Fuselage length: The A321 is much longer than the A320 and has additional doors ahead of and behind the wing.

You can find detailed features in the guides A320neo or ceo? and Telling the A318 to A321 apart. There is also a dedicated type page for the A321.

Routes and network

At its core, Interjet was a domestic airline. Mexico is big and the road connections between the metropolises are long – cheap flights between Mexico City, Monterrey, Guadalajara, Cancún and many smaller cities were the main business. From 2011 an international network was added that grew quickly:

• Central America: Guatemala City as the first international route in 2011, later San José in Costa Rica, among others.
• USA: Miami from February 2012, New York JFK from August 2012, later Los Angeles and San Francisco.
• Canada: Montréal, Toronto and Vancouver from 2017.
• South America: Bogotá from 2013, Lima from 2016, then Medellín, Cartagena, Quito and Guayaquil in 2019.

Interjet never flew to Europe. For German spotters the airline was therefore mainly seen on trips to Mexico or at airports like Miami and New York. In March 2020 Interjet suspended all international flights because of the pandemic; the international network never got going again afterward.

The end: from crisis to bankruptcy

Interjet did not fail from the pandemic alone. Financial difficulties can be traced back to around 2013, when unpaid taxes became known. With the growing fleet, obligations to lessors rose, and the costs of the Superjet program were added.

How high the debts were exactly cannot be stated cleanly: depending on the source, the figures quoted ranged from a few billion to around 40 billion pesos. In early 2022 plans for a small restart with around ten A320s were still circulating – nothing came of that either.

Interjet in the Mexican market

Interjet helped shape Mexican air traffic in the 2000s and 2010s. Together with Volaris and Viva Aerobus, the airline was part of a new generation of low-priced carriers that made flying in Mexico affordable for many people. The difference: Volaris and Viva Aerobus consistently relied on the pure budget model with dense seating, Interjet on more comfort at a small price – similar to JetBlue in the US, with which Interjet at times compared itself.

After Interjet’s end, mainly Volaris and Viva Aerobus took over the freed-up market share. How budget airlines work in general and why the hybrid model is hard to sustain is explained in the article How low-cost carriers work. With Interjet, Mexicana and the regional airline Aeromar, several well-known names have disappeared in Mexico since 2010.

Common mix-ups

• Reading 4O as “40” – the IATA code consists of a digit and a letter: the digit four and the letter O.
• Expecting the callsign INTERJET – since 2012 the airline identified itself on the radio as “ABC AEROLINEAS”.
• Taking every Mexican A320 for Interjet – Volaris, Viva Aerobus and others also fly Airbus aircraft with XA- registrations.
• Logging an A320neo as an A320 – pay attention to engine size; Interjet had both generations.
• Taking Interjet for a European airline – the airline never flew across the Atlantic.
• Mistaking the standstill for a pause – after December 2020 Interjet did not operate a single scheduled flight.

Conclusion

Interjet stands for a short, steep rise and an abrupt end. The airline brought more seat pitch to the Mexican budget market, flew as far as Canada and South America and, with the Sukhoi Superjet 100, wrote a chapter that existed nowhere else in North America. For spotters it remains an archive topic: if you document old photos cleanly with registration, date and type, you preserve a piece of Mexican aviation history.