Good morning, everyone. We're excited to have you all here today. I am Liliana Juárez, Volaris Investor Relations Manager, for those of you I haven't met. It's great to be back in New York City and see many of you in person. For those of you joining us on the webcast today, we hope to see you soon. On behalf of the Volaris Executive and Investor Relations team, it is my pleasure to welcome you to our 2022 Investor Day. Also, I'd like to thank our friends here at the Stock Exchange for hosting us, and to the Volaris entire team that help us daily to prepare us to be here. Before we begin, please remind everyone that this meeting may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws.
Forward-looking statements are subject to several factors that could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from expectations, as described in the company's filings. These statements speak only as of date they are made, and Volaris has no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement. Over the next few hours, we will share our path for long-term profitability and the diverse avenues for the company's growth. We will first hear from our Chairman of the Board, Brian Franke. Next, we will hear from our President and Chief Executive Officer, Enrique Beltranena, with the strategic vision for Volaris, followed by our Executive Vice President of Commercial and Airline Operations, Holger Blankenstein, who will talk about the different regional opportunities. Our Chief Operations Officer, José Luis Suárez, will share about our operational discipline and efficiencies.
Lastly, our Chief Financial Officer, Jaime Pous, will provide the advantage of our cost leadership and financial strength. We will then turn to the Q&A session. To close the day, we have a special guest, Dionisio Pérez-Jácome, Reputational and Corporate Development VP at Volaris, who will briefly present Mexico's macroeconomic strengths. He previously served as Secretary of Communications and Transportation, and before that, he was Ambassador of Mexico to the OECD. We have the honor to count on the presence of most of Volaris's board members and executives today. I encourage everybody to meet them later at lunch. This morning, we issued our November traffic report update and a press release, as well as an infographic and the presentation for today's event, which can be found on our investor relations webpage. With that being said, please welcome Brian Franke to the stage.
Hey. Buenos días. Welcome, everybody. Thank you for joining us today. In addition to my role as the chair at Volaris, I'm also principal at the private equity firm Indigo Partners, and we've been invested in Volaris for many years now. The team asked me to start today by briefly explaining why we originally invested in Volaris and why our investment thesis holds true today. For those who attended the Wings Club event this year, I'd like to start by restating a comment made by Bill Franke, Indigo's managing partner, in his Wings Club speech. He said, "It is our view that to be successful in this industry, you have to be aggressive to the market, but conservative with the balance sheet." I think you'll hear today that Volaris has been both. Let me make, well, one key point for you today.
While we at Indigo have enjoyed watching Volaris become Mexico's biggest airline in recent years, this management team is just getting started. Volaris has emerged stronger from the pandemic, and we see an opportunity to continue that trajectory. For those of you keeping score, you'll have noted that our revenue and EBITDA in US dollars in the last 12 months are nearly three times larger than they were in 2013 when we had our IPO. Our unit cost is lower than before the pandemic, despite recent inflationary pressures. Today, Volaris has the most cash on its balance sheet in the history of the company, and our leverage ratios are better than pretty much any airline in North America. At the same time, Volaris was conservative with its financing.
I'd note that today, Volaris reported free cash of $750 million in the third quarter against a market cap of approximately $1.2 billion. To me, that market cap against the cash balance is a surprising statistic, especially considering the continuing profitability and strong financial position of the airline. The Indigo original investment thesis for Volaris. Let me start by saying that Mexico is a great market for ULCC airline. Mexico combines strong macro, attractive demographics, and favorable tailwinds. When we looked at Mexico back when we invested in Volaris, we found a country where people travel a lot. Historically, that travel's been by long-haul bus, but the transition to plane had already begun. In our time investing in Volaris, we've seen the air transportation market in Mexico double in total passengers carried per year.
Total air passengers are now above 100 million per year combined for both domestic and international travel. While that may sound like a big number, there are still over 1 billion long-haul bus passengers per year. If another 10% of long-haul bus passengers move to the airlines, the size of the aviation industry in Mexico would double once again. As to the Mexican population, we continue to see a young Mexico will continue to develop as a technologically savvy, youthful consumer in a vast territory with a diverse topography. It's a perfect market for the ULCC customer. Mexico and the U.S. have also seen an increase in their economic integration since NAFTA was created, and we expect that to continue. Nearshoring is today becoming a great opportunity for the future. Mexico is already seeing an important increase in foreign direct investment that should drive further economic growth.
Volaris, with a strong transborder network, will continue to benefit from that expanding relationship with the U.S. From the date of its first flight to Tijuana, Volaris is focused on building important market share in its key cities. Some of these following statistics to me, for those of you who are in the industry, are kind of mind-bending. Volaris is dominant in Tijuana with over a 70% market share. In Guadalajara, it's the largest carrier and controls 54% of the market. In Cancún, Volaris is also the largest carrier with a 45% market share. In more than half of its domestic stations, Volaris has a dominant market position. Those efforts have paid off as today Volaris is about twice the size of Aeroméxico.
As we think about the trends that have fueled and will continue to fuel Volaris's growth in Mexico, we see striking similarities in Central America. Volaris will rely on many of its existing strategies and techniques as it expands into other markets in the region. We consider Central America a natural extension of our Mexican markets. Volaris is the perfect fit in these markets. VFR, visiting friends and relatives, leisure, small to mid-size company traffic with the ULCC model that will continue creating elasticity and demand, competing at bus prices, enhancing load factors, and developing perfectly fit ancillaries made for our customers. As an investor in the Volaris stock, how do I think about the opportunity today? In my view, Volaris remains an excellent opportunity.
Those who know us know we are a patient investor, and we see a stock that trades at a discount to its peers today. For that reason, Indigo participated in the company's recent rights offering last year, and we increased our position in the stock. We see a lot of potential at Volaris, and we are convinced the market will eventually recognize the value of what this team has created. As I said at the beginning of my remarks, Indigo's original investment thesis for Volaris holds true today. As we look forward, I will add two critical pieces to that puzzle. First, Volaris's markets are poised for growth, and the company has multiple opportunities across several markets. That growth is underpinned by a well-priced order book for more than 140 aircraft as the airline quickly transitions from ceo aircraft to the more fuel-efficient neo aircraft.
Looking forward, the airline's operations and its underlying cost structure will be underpinned by the continuing transition to the highly efficient A321neo aircraft. I'd be remiss if I didn't comment on the management team that will present to you today. This is a team that's been proving its excellence for more than 15 years. The core management team has been together since the airline's inception, and they have become the face of aviation in Mexico. This team has been battle-tested. They've successfully navigated a myriad of challenges: bird flu, oil at $140 a barrel, global financial collapse, competitive incursions, country downgrades, country upgrades, and now COVID. Through these times, they've built Volaris into the leading airline in Mexico.
At Indigo, we believe any investment requires a strong management team to navigate the challenges of this industry, and the Volaris management team is one of the best. To conclude, what does Indigo like about Volaris? Low costs, growth potential, strong market opportunity, great balance sheet, and a high-quality management team. I think that sums it up. By the way, it's a pretty good group to hang out with as well. With that, I'll pass it over to Enrique, but first, we'll leave you with a short video to introduce you a little bit better to Volaris. Thank you.
Good morning again. Thank you very much for being here. I'm glad to see a lot of faces that I had not seen, like, in a couple of years, okay. Thank you very much for really being here, for making it for today. Thanks also for the people that are connected over our digital channel. Let me start by saying that. I mean, Brian, I think, made a very good point about the significant experience navigating volatility and driving profitable growth throughout this cycle. On this chart, I want to set the stage on where we started in 2006 to 2020 on the left side, and leave those achievements there for you to think about what we had done before the pandemic.
In 2020 and 2021, we had the COVID crisis, and I would say that the most important thing that we did during these couple of years is to turn it into an opportunity. Opportunities in times of crisis are very important. Volaris made a lifetime move during the pandemic. Remember, Aeroméxico filed a Chapter 11 restructuring process, and Interjet disappeared during the pandemic. Other carriers in Central America shrank, and the U.S. market carriers were absolutely focused on preserving liquidity. Volaris came out from COVID with a recovery, which was the best in the world among all listed carriers in the entire worldwide. Guys, think about it. Think about what that takes.
Think about what work was behind the level of restructuring from our financial situation, the capacity to ramp up and start from scratch and accelerate to become the most important carrier in Mexico in two years. Let me talk to you a little bit about what we did since 2019 and where our growth happened. Okay? It is important to say, I mean, there we were at the end of June, and we had to start operating, and we had to accelerate and ramp up capacity. I remember by the end of that year, in December of that year, we grew up 105% our ASMs versus the ASMs that we flew in December of 2019. In 2020, we grew. In 2021, we grew an additional 29% versus base capacity in 2019.
In 2022, we grew on top of that, on top of the 2021, another 25%. Yes, those numbers are big, but we had a once in a life opportunity to cover the hole that was left by the other carriers that shrunk. It was important to accelerate growth. We produced, at the end of 2021, an EBITDAR margin of 37%. Guys, I mean, who did produce a margin of 37% in that year? It was an outstanding number, and in reality, what we are seeing is we really took the opportunity, and we drove a lot of capacity. I want to say it very clear today, we are over with that process.
We filled in the bucket that we had in the market. Next year we will be growing in a single-digit number. Where we are today. In 2022, we will finish the year with an ASM growth of 25% versus full year 2021. At the same time, in our case, and this is something really important, because we are seeing a lot of carriers in the rest of the world that are growing dramatically in the revenue line, but they lost control of the cost and Available Seat Mile ex-fuel, and it's way high. That will end. The process of ramping up revenues will finish eventually, and our cost is going to be there. If you allow the cost to go out of proportion, then you lose control of your company.
Our CASK ex-fuel was under control at $0.042 at the end of the third quarter of 2022. Volaris leadership in the domestic market grew from a 31% market share at the end of 2019 to a 42% market penetration as of September of this year. Volaris became the market leader, displacing Aeroméxico. We are now almost two times larger than them. At the time, Viva Aerobus became the second-largest player, and Aeroméxico was left as a third participant in the Mexican domestic market. This is also relevant, not only from the perspectives I already underlined, but it is relevant because now Mexico is dominated by a 72% share by the ultra-low-cost carriers. It's a market that fundamentally changed dramatically in the last years.
Everything we achieved in 2020 and 2021 was without any governmental support. That's also outstanding if you think from the perspective that the recovery, the acceleration, and the growth in terms of ASMs that we achieved. Volaris capacity during this period was mainly deployed in the Mexican metropolitan area, including the Mexico City main airport and other secondary airports, and also in the core markets, especially in Tijuana and Guadalajara. We also reinforced growth to the VFR U.S. segment. Let me speak a little bit about the capacity in the metropolitan area, because I think it's really important for you guys to understand that there's the future, and Holger will speak about that.
The metropolitan area, because of the cap of Mexico City, had not been growing in terms of service, and we now have the opportunity to deploy in capacity and really service that market, which is the largest market in Mexico. At the Mexico City Airport, we are also leaving a saturated airport due to governmental restrictions this year, and capacity has been reduced as a result, and we are seeing also an improvement of yields finally in Mexico City Airport. General capacity within Mexico's domestic market has become accretive. At the same time, the Mexican domestic load factors have improved in the second semester of 2022, and we did serve pricing trends to from the U.S. to the high.
We solidified our position as one of the largest foreign operators in the U.S. and became the most robust foreign operator, for example, in two of the most important visiting friends and relatives stations, Los Angeles and Chicago, among other city pairs that we have, especially in the West Coast. Market share has evolved in the U.S. transborder market from 8% pre-pandemic to 12% today in the international markets. Volaris is something different that you need to understand. I always underline that Volaris is not only an emerging carrier, but it is also an air-airline that in the last years was able to triplicate itself in terms of certificates of operations. Now we have three certificates of operations, three airlines, one in Mexico, one in El Salvador, and one in Costa Rica.
This is very important when you look at it, especially in light of the Category Two situation. The categorization of Mexico is something that we really need to talk about it. I will spend some time in a minute. Even under Category Two limits, we need to say first that Volaris never stopped flying to the U.S. Sometimes I hear people saying, "Because of this, Volaris has not been growing or flying to the U.S." No, that's wrong. We kept our capacity in the U.S. As a matter of fact, we grew our capacity 18% in the last two years, each year 18%. It's been relevant to our profitability status. What happened in the middle of this situation? Mexico's aviation changed dramatically. We now have an industry like the U.S. after the consolidation process at the end of the last decade.
Several carriers disappeared, and three leading operators in a rational aviation market are now living in Mexico. We're in an environment more conscious about the need to generate the return of investment. Changing gears and speaking about costs, we manage costs and grow operating profitability in a highly adverse environment. Inflation has really tried to hit our cost structure, but we have been able to manage and offset it. I want to say, as Bill said, it's important to manage your balance sheet, and we have a great balance sheet with a combination of competitive advantages and have the best profitability of any carrier in Mexico during the last year, years. Let me give you some facts on where we are today. As I said, we are the Latin America's largest ultra-low-cost carriers.
We're flying approximately 100,000 daily passengers across Mexico, the United States, Central America, and South America. Think about it, guys. I was talking to Kevin Wilson some minutes ago, and we were thinking about when we started and when we built the first company and when we built Volaris at the beginning. It has taken a lot of work, but now we are with those 100,000 passengers per day. We're flying in Central America, we're flying in South America, we're flying in Mexico, we're flying to the U.S. In 2021, as this referenced quote here, we became the largest airline in terms of passenger traffic in Latin America. These are our most important numbers.
One of the modes not mentioned here is that we operate with a family of employees whom we call ambassadors because they represent our brand of more than 7,000 people now. None of them was fired. None of them was furloughed during the pandemic, and I'm proud to say that they held up. These are the building blocks in whom we will continue to invest and are our number 1 competitive advantage. You cannot buy a team of this resiliency and quality group of ambassadors that are called like that because they all are following a mission, which is, with the best people and the lowest cost, we make more travel well. This company had no business interruption problems because despite the crisis, we also thoroughly planned and hired technical personnel to support the growth.
It's not only that we didn't interrupt because we were starting again, but we were growing from 80 aircraft to 115 aircraft that we have today. We wisely built our position more robust, strengthening us as we continue growing. Finally, let me announce you something very important. Tomorrow, we'll open the New York Stock Exchange trading session, ringing the bell, and celebrating our 10 million first-time flyers that switch from buses to air transportation flying in Volaris. Volaris has a seasoned and stable management team. We have an experienced team with a proven track record of navigating economic uncertainty and adapting to changing demand. The numbers on this chart represent the time in the industry and the time they have been in Volaris.
One of the requests I remember that the board did when we founded the company was that we needed to be prepared for future growth, and that we had to be prepared with a bench of executives in the different tiers of the company to make change happen safely. This is the case. We brought the best executives we always could with varying nationalities if needed, to have the best experience at home. These executives have built the company's culture as a difference from any of the operators in Latin America. I can guarantee you guys that there's not one single company in the continent that has a mature, seasoned, and experienced team like Volaris has, and we never improvised with executives simply for managing or achieving a short-term goal. Let me introduce you a little bit of that team.
Here we have Holger Blankenstein, our Executive Vice President Airline Commercial and Operations. We also have Jaime Pous, our Chief Financial Officer. José Luis Suárez, the Chief Operating Officer. Alejandro Iturbe, our Chief Legal Officer. Dionisio Pérez-Jácome, who just joined the team as a VP, Reputation and Corporate Development. Renato Salomone, our Senior Director, Corporate Finance and Investor Relations. Susana Martínez, who's our Director of Talent and Organizational Development. We have Wei Jin, who's our Director of Network Planning. We also have the rest of the board sitting in the back. I thank you guys for being here and for all the support you gave us during these last two years, especially these last two years. Volaris is a resilient, ultra-low-cost carrier business model which is set for profitability.
Our proven business model has remained unchanged since our foundation times. It will continue to serve a foundation for profitable growth. Everything starts with the lowest operating cost. This enables base fares, which stimulate demand. More demand generates more ancillaries and enables us to add in the market unit costs. Let me insist you guys, we have grown a lot, we have matured a lot, we have achieved a great market share, but this is not the time to change the fundamentals of this company. We will continue operating under this model going forward. Among all the essential topics that we'll be touching today's presentation, we're also focused on our ESG strategy, embed in our corporate strategy.
We have clear short and long-term goals on every pillar, environmental, social, and corporate governance. We materialize them into goals and KPIs that we constantly measure as part of our daily activities. We are the only airline in Latin America that is included in the Dow Jones Sustainability MILA Pacific Alliance Index, among other rankings where we participate. Now, let me start talking about the future. Why Mexico? Why aviation? Why Volaris? Let me start by saying why Mexico. In reality, we strongly think that we need to focus on Mexico because that's our home. Second, because it is a healthy emerging market with a very strong growth potential, contrary to the conventional wisdom. Here are some facts. We have strong macro drivers. We have attractive demographics and favorable tailwinds.
Before I move on, I want to underline the fact that geographical and geopolitical positions only improved during the last years as an addition with Central America, and we foresee Mexico's commercial strength as an asset for future profitability and sustained growth. Before I continue, I want to give you an update on the FAA recategorization on the Mexican Aviation Authority. We'll speak about this later at length when Holger presents. Knowing that CAT 1 is in top of everybody's mind, I wanted to share you the latest with you. In a recent interview from Jorge Nuño, the Secretary of Infrastructure, Communications, and Transportation, provided four milestones on Mexico's Category One status. This is the latest timeline. He said, in January 2023, the FAA will come to Mexico to evaluate corrective action plans. Second, February 2023, the FAA begins formal audit.
In March of 2023, the Mexican Aviation Authority will receive audit results. In April 2023, Mexican government is targeting to return to Category 1. I have been working together with the secretary and his team. Believe me, in the last 2 months, I have seen more progress than in the last year. Something which is important to say, they are also working on the changes of the law. They are also working on providing the funds to the FAA, which is very important and key for returning for the category. Having said that, I want to remind everybody in this room, which is some four topics which are really important. We never interrupted flying to the U.S. Actually, in 2021 and 2022, we were able to grow capacity by 18% each year.
Volaris, despite the secretary's statements, has only planned to start ramping more capacity until the fourth quarter in 2023. Let me tell you, I'm not waiting for this to happen. I have prepared the team. If it happens earlier, we will do our ramp-up of capacity earlier. If it doesn't happen, we have more than 300 routes where we can deploy capacity and still grow the company. It's very important for you guys to understand that the three certificates that we have are also available, and we can still fly to the U.S., even through Mexico, with the certificates of operations from El Salvador and Costa Rica. There's no downside for Volaris if the Category 1 doesn't happen. Having said that, I strongly believe that we'll get it done, and we are working together to get it done. Why aviation?
Well, Mexican aviation industry, as I said, now has consolidated into three-player markets in its early stages of growth. Large bus potentials, I mean, large bus switching potential. Remember, I mean, when I migrated to Mexico to found Volaris, I remember I went to those stations in Mexico. Those stations in Mexico showed us, I mean, a huge possibility of switching the passengers, also a great segmentation in the transportation market. Having said that, back then, air trips per capita were really low in Mexico, 0.22. We observed the market and found out that most of the people in Mexico were using buses to transport themselves. Actually, Mexico is one of the largest bus markets in the world. We all, we observed an emerging opportunity in the non-penetrated air travel market.
Important that we do not depend from the GDP to switch those passengers, because they are already moving themselves, they are already transporting themselves. It only depends on the capacity of Volaris to switch those travelers from bus to air transportation at the similar price or cost they got today to use the buses. Volaris operates in a great, solid, and resilient VFR market. This is also a big difference. I mean, when you guys think about airlines in the U.S., you think about business traffic, you think about leisure. Volaris is about VFR in most of its network. The migration of the previous century to the U.S. generated a resilient VFR market, multiplying itself with the second and the third generations with better economic capacity.
During those years, the development Mexico had as a result of NAFTA and the Northern economies developed to become the best exporters and construct an emerging middle class in the North, which with new travel needs. This new positive economic pulse allowed migration within Mexico from the south to the northern states, which created mobility also within Mexico. Watch out, guys. We're in a new decade, that new decade has new migration trends. Venezuelans are migrating, Nicaraguans are migrating, Salvadorians are migrating, Guatemalans are migrating, Honduras are migrating, and they're migrating within that region and to Mexico. That's the future of migration in our region. It is important to watch out and prepare ourselves for the third tier of development and connectivity needs in that region. That's why Central America is also so important for us. We operate in an ideally suited geography for aviation.
Mexico, the U.S., Central America, huge territories with vast different topography, also require aviation transportation to move people and essential goods within their environmental effectively. Growing trips per capita toward levels in comparable market presents also a significant capacity opportunity. Just think what we can become, what Volaris can become if we can achieve transportation in similar economic countries by flipping bus transportation into air. Transportation at today's pricing without even excelling the economy or the GDP. Let me get to the most important four statements that I want to leave in the back of your minds today. Really, guys, please pay attention to these four statements. Why Volaris? Volaris because we have a clear path to long-term profitability growth. Volaris has significant opportunities for this profitable growth, we do have the lowest cost. We are the leaders in low cost.
We are one of the lowest cost operators in the world. The fleet plan only aims to drive further efficiencies, low costs going lower, low costs going lower. Let me repeat it, low costs going lower if we have the right fleet plan. Volaris is a market and profitable leader. We are the largest airline in Mexico by passengers, but we have been consistently the most profitable airline in Mexico, and we have a tremendous EBITDA potential in terms of expansion. We are well. Speaking about high growth opportunities, Holger will really speak about this at length. We are well-positioned to leverage regional shifts in population and transportation trends. As I explained, we do have a likelihood of U.S. regulatory decision to move on to CAT 1, which will create additional upside. We have tremendous diversified growth avenues plan available.
This is something which is really there to move on. From the financial strength perspective, we do have strong and flexible balance sheet and cash generation capabilities. We also will explain our conservative debt position and healthy financing conditions. Let me wrap up. We do have four important pillars that I need you guys to have it in the back of your minds going forward. We are the low cost leadership. We have market and profitability leadership. We have high growth opportunities and great financial strengths for going forward. Today, we all will focus on every single one and further explain and detail each of these pillars. Let me finish here, thanking you guys again for being here. Really, I want to invite you to the thrilling journey that Volaris is just starting from today on. Thank you very much. Holger will continue now.
Thank you, Enrique. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It's great to be here, and I'd like to discuss a little bit further the market and the profitability leadership in our markets, as well as the high growth opportunities going forward in our business. Mexico's demographics are really favorable, and Enrique already alluded to this. You might not realize how big of a country Mexico actually is. A population of 129 million people. It makes it the tenth-largest country in the world. Not only that, Mexico's population is relatively young, with 42% of its people under the age of 25, probably more eager to travel than their grandparents or their parents even, and more digitally savvy. That's important for us because of our direct distribution and digital marketing communication.
There's also a large and growing traveling class, a middle class that is earning enough disposable income to be able to travel. 90 million people are expected to be of working age by 2050. As is characteristic in an emerging market, more people are becoming part of the middle class with aspirations to travel by air. As we always say in Volaris, people think themselves as part of the middle class once they've taken their first plane trip in their lives. That leads me to show you more about the emerging travel habits of the Mexican consumer. The consumer habits in Mexico are changing the way people are traveling. The way discretionary travel spend is allocated is fundamentally shifting from bus travel to air travel. For Volaris, this creates lasting power from a demand standpoint.
Volaris is changing the way people's lives and the way people travel. Think about this, there's 3 billion bus passengers in Mexico. That's more than 20 bus trips per person per year. Out of which almost 800 million are in the luxury and first class segment, and those are the segments most likely to switch from bus to air travel. If we were only able to switch another 1% of those three billion people, we would almost double the domestic Mexican air market. If we were only able to switch another 10% of the 800 million luxury and first class passengers, we would almost double the entire Mexican air market, domestic and international. Since its founding in 2006, Volaris has already been successful in doing that.
According to our data, we have welcomed 10 million new air travelers on board our airplanes. Those 10 million people are taking multiple trips per year. Those are people that have never been on an airplane before. Every time we open new destinations in the U.S., I meet people with Mexican heritage who have lived in here in the U.S. for some time. Many tell us stories of their annual bus trips down to see friends and families in Mexico. Sometimes these bus trips take more than 24 hours to get to their destinations. We always go in there and, you know, give them away some tickets to ask them to try Volaris air service.
They're delighted when they find out that they can do their same annual trip 3 hours, instead of 24+ hours, and that is at the same price as the bus ticket. When we analyzed entering into the Denver market, we actually went to the bus station in Denver and counted the passengers that boarded buses to Chihuahua. That's another 12-15-hour bus trip. We found that there were 2 daily bus runs from Denver to Chihuahua. That's how we ended up offering that new route service that had never been operated before by an airline. Our marketing guys are quite creative on how to get people off the buses. For example, we give away tickets in bus stations every year in several towns in Mexico, and we have a formal bus switching communication campaign.
Our route planning team is also using big data to monitor and track bus customers' behavior. Let's further review why air travel in Mexico makes sense and is growing. Mexico is a very large country, and travel by land is complicated by multiple mountain ranges and canyons. We constructed the shape of Mexico with maps of European countries. 25 European countries could fit into the land area of Mexico, and there is no passenger rail system like in Europe. Think about it. Tijuana in the north to Cancun in the south is a similar distance as New York to San Francisco. In the north of Mexico you have the U.S., which makes Mexico's location privileged and generates the largest cross-border market in the world, which is the Mexico to U.S. cross-border market.
COVID has actually accelerated bus switching, as air travel is considered safer and cleaner than sitting on buses for long hours without the air filter technology of a modern aircraft. If you think about countries to the south of Mexico, in Central America, the geographies are quite similar to Mexico. That is one of the reasons we think of Central America as a logical extension of our core business. Air travel is well developed in Mexico and Central America, right? Well, it's not. Air trips per capita are really still low, and there's ample room to grow the air market. If you compare the developments to the U.S. after the emergence of Southwest as the first low-cost carrier, air trips per capita have risen consistently and gradually to almost 3. 3 air trips per capita in the U.S.
In Mexico, we are now in year 17 of Volaris, that little purple line down there, and we have doubled air traffic since our foundation. We have reached 0.5 air trips per capita. So you can see there's still ample room to grow. As a market leader, Volaris is well-positioned to capitalize on this trend and continue to grow the domestic Mexican market. We also have the benefit of the VFR heavy traffic that might not exist to this extent in the U.S. Volaris is making air travel accessible to a broader group of people. We are also observing a virtuous cycle effect in places that we start air service to, and economic development we bring to those regions, to those destinations. That, in turn, generates more air passengers in those destinations.
Just as a case in point, the meteoric growth of tourism in Cancun and the Riviera Maya region would not have been possible without Volaris as the market leader in that region. New beach destinations are showing up as a possibility for weekend trips, such as Loreto on the Baja California Peninsula that had no air service from Mexico previously. Let's have a look at the air market in Mexico a little bit closer. The pandemic led to an unprecedented market consolidation. The top three players now hold 98% of the domestic market. As market leader, Volaris is best positioned to capture the benefits of the emerging air market that I just discussed.
While we don't make any decisions on market share based on market share, there are advantages to being market leader, and it allows us to develop the market so that it makes sense for us. That is precisely what we have done. For us, the COVID crisis and the resulting consolidation provided a once in a lifetime opportunity to accelerate our growth in 2021 and 2022. In 2021, we added 15 aircraft. This year, we will add another 15 aircraft, and we were able to offer more frequencies and new routes in all the top markets in Mexico. This made Mexico, and especially our customer segments, the VFRs, the visiting friends and relatives, and the price-sensitive leisure customers, the fastest-recovering markets in the world post-COVID.
It yet again illustrates how Volaris is able to take advantage of times of crisis due to our more resilient business model. Nevertheless, even in times of accelerated growth, we did not abandon our formula for success. Throughout our history, we have taken a well-structured approach to growth around our core visiting friends and relatives market. We strongly believe in the concept of profits from the core, in which growth needs to be centered around a strong core business. Too much diversification or pursuing adjacent opportunities is risky. Since 2006, the year we started, we were thoughtful on how to grow our business, first to the north in the same customer segments, then to the south, again in the same customer segments. This does in no way mean that growth in the core is exhausted.
Rather, it is additive. We will continue to grow our core business for years to come. This organized approach to growth explains why we are different in terms of our VFR customer base and why we have not ventured further afield into other geographies and to other customer segments yet. With that in mind, now let's look ahead to the medium-term future. How are we thinking about expanding our business? Well, there are multiple avenues of growth, and they are not mutually exclusive. All the avenues of growth have something in common. We are looking for underserved markets or unserved markets with high stimulation potential through lower airfares. Mexico domestic, our most important core market. We already discussed the attractive demographics, low air penetration, and our solid market position. That really provides the foundations for Volaris' future domestic Mexico growth. The United States transborder market.
Here, we are focused on the Mexican heritage population and the Mexico northbound leisure passengers. At 37 million people of Mexican heritage in the U.S. and growing, that Mexican heritage population in the U.S. provides increasing demand to Volaris transborder VFR markets. Central America. Again, we see it as an extension of our core domestic market with similar demographics and geographies and customer segments. On top of that, there is much less ultra-low-cost carrier penetration in that region. We aim to replicate Volaris' successful U.S. to Mexico to U.S. VFR business and develop a healthy intra-CAM business along the way. Finally, a little bit further afield, other geographies, such as South America, U.S. southbound leisure, Canada, and the Caribbean. Our aircraft have a mission range of approximately six hours, which puts a total population of 940 million people within reach.
Markets with the highest opportunities are South America. We are an airline that is geographically positioned between South America and North America. The U.S. to Mexico, southbound leisure, Americans visiting the beach destinations in Mexico, which today accounts for about half of the U.S.-Mexico transporter market, and Canada and the Caribbean a little bit later. Let's tackle them, those growth opportunities once at a time. In the Mexican domestic market, we have developed a strong basis for growth. We have a more diversified network than our competitors. We are the leader in more than half of the airports available for A320 service in Mexico, including the large markets of Tijuana, Guadalajara, and Cancun. 46% of our route network have no air competition and competes only against the buses.
If you look at competitors' route network overlap with ours, they overlap more with our network than we overlap with their network, giving us a competitive advantage in the market as a whole. All of this gives us an ideal starting position to benefit from bus conversion, given our market strength. Where do we see the market evolve to? Historically, if you look back, 10 years or 15, 17 years since we were founded, Volaris is responsible for 70% of the incremental passengers versus 2006, which is a staggering number. Volaris has really helped Mexico's domestic market development and stimulation. Today, 2022, there's no overcapacity in the market as a whole. The market as a whole is just getting back to pre-pandemic levels, both in capacity and in demand.
We're actually about 8% over 2019 levels. If you look at the number of aircraft flying in the market, it's about the same today as in December 2019 pre-pandemic, and that's about 350 aircraft for the market as a whole. Looking ahead, Volaris aims to continue to be the key driver of Mexican domestic market growth for the next five years. For the next five years, what we're planning to do is drive growth through additional point-to-point flights, connecting the dots in Mexico, clearly continuing our bus switching campaign and continuing with our low, low-fare market stimulation. Actually, most of our growth will actually come from additional frequencies in already operated routes. We believe that the medium-term total route potential could be up to 300 routes, and that is up from 120 today.
Just to do the math, that means an additional 180 routes on top of the current 120 routes already operated by us to get to a total of 300 domestic routes in the medium term. Shifting gears towards our international core business, the VFR customer segment. Enrique already mentioned the migration trends in the continent. Immigration, migration within Volaris territory really creates an opportunity to drive our international growth. Did you realize that Washington, D.C., is the city with one of the highest Salvadorian populations in the world? Did you realize that L.A., Los Angeles, is the city with the largest Mexican populations in the world? I think it's the third largest Mexican city outside of Mexico. Not only the VFR traffic is important for our U.S. destinations.
There's also a large immigrant diasporas throughout Volaris territory, such as, for example, 400,000 Nicaraguans living in Costa Rica. Putting it all together, there are at least 44.5 million people that we know of, and this immigration phenomenon is only growing within the Volaris network reach and is bound to fuel further international growth for us. If we look at the Mexican heritage population in the U.S. The Mexican heritage population clearly drives the opportunity in our U.S. market. It is the largest community within our geography, within our reach, and it has grown by 15 million people over the last 20 years. That drives traffic.
If you look on the right of this slide, Mexico to U.S. transporter passengers in non-leisure markets have jumped from nine million to 16 million in only 12 years, or 1 million travelers per year since 2009 to 2019. Here we intentionally omitted 2020 due to pandemic distortions. At Volaris, we are focused on marketing and communicating to these communities here in the U.S., and we do that in a low-cost way. Let me give you a couple of examples. When we entered to the Chicago market, we did not do any traditional advertising and promotions. We did a grassroots campaign directed to the Mexican communities living in Chicago, giving away vouchers or free tickets. That created word of mouth in those Mexican communities.
In the Central Valley, California, we partnered with the Mexican consulates in the Bay Area, Fresno, and L.A., which helped us communicate directly with the local Mexican communities in California. We are low cost and grassroots while being close to our people, our passengers. We are now, as a result of this, these campaigns, among the top three international carriers, both in Chicago and L.A. In the U.S., we believe the medium-term total route potential could be up to 145, and that again is up from 70 today. Today, we are limited in growth to the U.S. as the Mexican Aviation Authority, AFAC, has been downgraded to Category 2. Let me spend a couple minutes going through where we are today. Let me explain the current situation.
What does Category 2 to an aviation authority mean? Why does it matter? Category 2 is defined as the freeze of certificates of operation from Mexican carriers to the U.S., driven by the lack of capacity from the Mexican Aviation Authority to effectively monitor operations. That affects, for Mexican carriers, all Mexican carriers, aircraft incorporations, frequency increases to the U.S., additional point-to-point operations, and new destinations in the U.S. I want to emphasize that this is in no way, shape, or form a judgment of the safety standards of Volaris. We have adhered to and will continue to adhere to the safety and maintenance standards of the FAA, the Mexican Authority, AFAC, and our Central American authorities as well. This affects all Mexican airline certificates.
They're all frozen due to the downgrade of Category 2 status of the FAA, that happened in May 2021. I again want to emphasize, while this has not allowed us to expand as much as we would have liked to into the U.S., this has not interrupted service into the U.S., and we were able to even expand under the current limits of Category 2 by 18% December 2022 versus December 2019. We currently operate approximately 100 daily flights into the U.S. The Mexican Aviation Authority has a diligent and expedited remediation plan in place, and Enrique already highlighted some of the milestones of that plan.
For us at Volaris, we are currently planning and forecasting that we will return as a country back to Category 1 by the fourth quarter of 2023. We have planning in place should there be an opportunity to move sooner. Please bear in mind that Volaris is the only Mexican carrier or company that has 2 other operating certificates in the region that are not affected by the category downgrade of Mexico. The likelihood of returning to Category 1 creates additional growth opportunities in the U.S., as we discussed earlier in our VFR core markets. That is for 2023. Now let's look south. We are convinced that there is an opportunity to replicate Volaris' successful VFR business model in Central America, specifically from Central America to the U.S. We've done this in Mexico.
We are operating many of the same stations that we'll operate from Central America already with our Mexican operations. We're doing this in a region that is very close to our core with a similar customer profile, the VFR segment. If you look at Central America, Central America is about 10 years behind Mexico, both in terms of immigration to the U.S., that is the left side of the chart, and in ULCC penetration, both in the region itself and to the U.S. There's a long runway for growth in Central America, and we believe that the medium-term total route potential could be up to 45 routes, and that's up from 15 today.
Finally, further down the road, I wanted to leave you with the idea that through our central geographical location, Volaris can reach Canada in the north to Peru in the south and everything in between with our current Neo fleet. The A321XLR are not currently planned and are not required. If you look at the opportunities, South America clearly comes to mind, both for the VFR core market and the price-sensitive leisure customers. Southbound U.S. to Mexico leisure traffic, which again accounts for about half of the transporter market, is an attractive opportunity. Eventually, Canada and the Caribbean. As you can see, the runway for growth is really long, but we are focused on what is in our sights right now because there's so much left to do in our core business.
Let's put it all together and have a look at our medium-term growth potential. In the medium term, Volaris expects to continue diversifying its network, focused on the core market growth and a well-structured execution of our growth plan. With more international growth, we will be able to achieve a diversification of revenue streams and more U.S. dollar-denominated revenues. We believe we can double the size of the business to about 490-550 routes operated by up to 200 aircraft in our fleet. A word on 2023. For 2023, we are currently planning a base capacity growth of 10% with the optionality of ramping up that percentage if market demand remains as strong as it is today. That's it for the geographical growth of our business.
The other piece of the growth puzzle are the ancillary revenues. Ancillary revenues are a key driver for demand. Why are ancillaries a competitive advantage? Just a quick reminder for everybody. Ancillary revenues are really customer-friendly because they give customers choices. Ancillary revenues stimulate demand because it allows us to reduce the base fares. It provides revenue stability, ancillary revenues are less elastic, less volatile, and less seasonal. It allows us the ability to generate recurring revenues as we currently do with our membership programs and subscription programs. They also give us an opportunity to generate true non-air revenues out of sight of competitive responses. Last but not least, ancillaries are a great competitive tool against the buses. We've had significant success in capturing ancillary revenues in the last decade.
We increased non-ticket revenue per passenger from $15 10 years ago to almost $40 today. There's ample room to improve when we compare ourselves against our ULCC peers. We have a robust ancillary roadmap in place, and we have a line of sight to achieve 50% of total operating revenues from ancillaries. Four main drivers that will get us there. Number one, continuously optimize pricing through personalization and advanced pricing modeling. That is already on the way, and we believe there's additional upside potential from that. Number two, launching new products and services. We're working on several insurance products, refund products that we plan to sell in the near future. Number three, building recurring revenue streams with our v.club memberships and subscription services. Four, enhancing existing products and services.
Want to remind everyone that, despite this, all of this growth to 50% of total operating revenues is gonna come despite in Mexico not being able to charge for carry on and the first checked bag. We are putting special attention on generating affinity and recurring revenue streams. Recurring revenue streams provide a steadier revenue flow throughout the year, generates customer affinity and frequency, and improves non-air related revenues, such as is in the case with our co-branded credit card. Today, we are excited to announce that we have been working on an affinity program in a strategic partnership with one of Latin America's biggest retailers. Our aim is to be the biggest affinity program in Latin America.
Our strategic partner will operate the program for us, and we will get access to a large retail customer base in our customer segments, the emerging middle class. We also get access to other important partners of the program. It really represents a new distribution channel for us, and we believe there is meaningful revenue upside in the medium term. We will reveal shortly the strategic partner and more details of the program. We will publish a press release once the contract is signed. Last but not least, I would like to highlight our efforts in the digital transformation of our customer interactions. We are convinced that digitalization of the customer journey increases customer satisfaction and cost savings. We have increasingly a digital native population, as I already mentioned, with 55 million Mexicans under the age of 25, and a similar trend is happening in Central America.
Here's how we are training customers to interact with a digital airline. 78% of our sales go through digitally owned channels. 92% of our customers and passengers use paperless boarding passes. 50% of our customers find self-service solutions in case of a disrupted flight, 84% of customer service inquiries through the chatbot are solved by the robot. We are leaders in this space, and we have functional designs that make it easy for our customers to make digital transitions. We are putting in place the digital foundations to scale up the business in a low-cost manner. For many of the first-time flyers out there that we have converted from the buses, this is really the only way they've experienced flying in their lives, and that creates stickiness and affinity with our brand. By the way, it helps reduce our operating costs.
To summarize the growth potential of our business. Capacity growth. Double the size of the airline to a fleet of around 200 aircraft and around 500 routes. Ancillary growth. Targeting 50% of total operating revenues from ancillaries. The growth in ancillary helps us reduce base fares slightly below inflation. The base fare growth is gonna be slightly below inflation due to the growth in ancillaries. Clearly, we are really excited about what lays ahead for Volaris, bringing lower fares and more air trips to many more communities and cities. With that, let me hand it over to José Luis Suárez, our Chief Operating Officer, to talk a little bit about the key pillars of our operations. Thank you very much for your attention.
Thank you, Holger. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It is an honor for me to be here to explain to you how Volaris achieves the lowest unit cost driven by operational excellence and efficiency. There are three main pillars in our operation, the first one being safety. Being rated as one of the safest ultra-low-cost carriers in the world by AirlineRatings and achieving seven out of seven stars in their classification. Volaris is regulated by multiple international authorities and operating three airline certificates where we have implemented strict safety, operational, and maintenance programs, including IOSA, ISO 9000 and 14000, Safety Management Systems, and we are a member of the Flight Safety Foundation since 2015. Let me make a special emphasis that 50% of Volaris fleet is registered in the U.S.
That means that it is operated under direct supervision of the FAA. The magic comes through operational efficiency. We begin with a very efficient asset, the Airbus A320 family aircraft, where 50% of our fleet now is equipped with the new ceo Pratt & Whitney engines. Second, we have very highly trained personnel operating and maintaining those aircraft. Third, we configure them to the maximum number of seats, and we use them in the most efficient manner. The last pillar is customer service. We focus on self-service processes, high schedule reliability, obtaining an adequate on-time performance, and a good Net Promoter Score of around 30%. Let me share with you some results on how a seamless operation helps to increase profitability for Volaris. Fuel consumption is around 9.7 gallons per 1,000 ASMs.
This positions Volaris not only as a very friendly airline with the environment, but also very competitive among its peers. We achieve this using the most efficient engines, the best standard operating procedures, and also we are looking at some Sustainable Aviation Fuel initiatives for the future. Second, looking at fleet utilization, Volaris produces 11.2 flight hours per day per aircraft, which is equivalent to 13.4 block hours per aircraft per day. This is one of the highest among A320 operators in the world. Over four hours better than the average operator. We achieve this by operating red-eye flights from west to east and then utilizing our aircraft during the daytime for leisure destinations. Operational reliability is not compromised by this high utilization.
At 99.5%, we are at the same level as other airlines that are using their assets about 50% of the time. This is done with adequate staffing, predictive maintenance tools, and an excellent partnership with parts, components, and engine suppliers. Of course, all the credit goes to our people, our team. We are very proud of our labor relations. Over the past two years, we have hired over 800 pilots and 1,500 flight attendants. This ample supply of technical personnel supports our fleet and our growth plans for the next years. We have customized training with our partners at flight schools so that Volaris can have their standard operating procedures taught to the personnel right from school.
We have also programs offering financial support for certain employees and their family members to go flight school and become the pilots of Volaris in the future. Our union was ratified in November of this year, we have signed a two-year agreement with compensation based on productivity and including fatigue monitoring and other tools that allow an adequate work-life balance. Talking about balance, now let me introduce Jaime Pous, our CFO, which will share with you some of our financial results. Thank you very much.
Thank you, José Luis. I will now focus on our low-cost leadership and our financial strength. Our business model's DNA starts with operating with the lowest cost, which allow us to offer low base fares to stimulate demand and attract more passengers into our planes at such a low fare that our competitors will lose money at our price levels. With a CASM ex-fuel within $0.042, Volaris ranks among the best carriers in the world. Our disciplined approach to containing controllable costs has enabled Volaris to maintain our advantage against our peers. We see room to continue improving our cost leadership as we benchmark ourselves line by line against the most efficient airlines in the world.
Over the past five years, our CASM ex-fuel has decreased at an annual compound rate of 1% compared to yearly average inflation of 5.3 in Mexico and 3.5% in the U.S. Our CASM ex-fuel versus 2019 pre-pandemic level is expected to grow only 8%, while North American carriers are seeing their CASM ex-fuel rising over 25% on average over the same four-year period. A strong evidence of the disciplined approach embedded in the Volaris culture to contain all controllable costs. It's not only about having the lowest cost, but also building the entire cost structure departing from an essential variable component. On average, more than 60% of our costs have been variable over the past five years, providing us with a significant competitive advantage. The variable proportion plays a fundamental role in incentivizing the productivity of all Volaris ambassadors.
Around 30% of the compensation on average is variable, ranging from 10% in entry-level positions to 75% at the suite level. In the down cycles, this variable cost component gives us the flexibility to scale down and up operations. Evidence of that is our performance during the pandemic, when the company did not furlough any employees, which allow us to be nimble in quickly adding capacity as we saw demand recovering. As I will provide further detail in the following slides, our ceo to neo transition fleet plan aims to drive greater efficiency via fuel savings and lower lease payments for the aircraft. The low cost will widen our advantage in the midterm. To achieve the preceding, we anticipate a short-term increase in the fleet ownership component of our unit cost in 2023 and 2024, and having a downward trend thereafter.
Please note that as shown in the graph, the other components of our CASM ex-fuel are expected to continue stable, notwithstanding inflationary pressures. We believe we can offset this short-term increase through travel improvement. In the midterm, the fleet plan aims to drive further efficiencies, low costs going lower. While comparing Volaris with the most efficient carriers in the world, the main opportunity to drive our cost efficiency to the next level resides in the fleet ownership component. We expect to achieve it through the transition into the NEOs with the right ownership cost. This process started in 2016. We are halfway through it.
As you can see, over the next five years, our contractual order will take us to a 100% neo fleet, allowing us to increase seats per departure by 12% while delivering 8% lower fuel burn in gallons per thousand ASMs. When comparing our current fuel efficiency versus peers, ULCCs consume 20% more gallons per thousand ASMs, and the gap is even wider versus Latin American and U.S. legacy carriers. As of today, the transition to neos has represented cumulative savings of 84 million gallons or $244 million. The benefits will widen as our fleet mix shifts into the 100% neo fleet. We estimate our fleet renewal will yield fuel savings over the next 5 years of approximately 300 million gallons or $1.2 billion, assuming an average economic fuel price of $3.00 per gallon.
This is the most effective fuel price hedge we can have. Our cost structure so far has benefited itself by lower lease rate factors. As you know, all of our fleet is financed through sale and leasebacks and straight operating leases. We have significantly improved our financing condition as a reflection of our scale and risk profile. As part of Indigo Partners portfolio, the joint procurement benefits that we have are fundamental for our cost construction. We have a significant advantage that none of the other airlines in Mexico can emulate. You may not be aware that we haven't even started receiving the aircraft from the two group orders placed with Indigo, including the largest order in Airbus history, totaling 430 aircraft. Next year, we will start receiving the first aircraft from the 2017 Indigo order, which will translate into favorable aircraft ownership costs.
These benefits will trickle down CASM and widen our cost advantage for many years. Our fleet plan is conservative and flexible. We have a flexible order book comprising of 145 NEO aircraft, half for renewal and the other half for growth. This order book will allow the fleet grow at a conservative annual rate of 6.6% through 2027. We additionally have the flexibility to scale up as needed through lease extensions and straight operating leases. It is relevant to mention that Volaris' order book provides a unique advantage against our peers. The smaller competitors that don't have a sizable order book and don't benefit from the joint procurement with a large group will struggle to obtain aircraft in the upcoming years at similar prices, putting Volaris in an even stronger position.
As Bill Franke mentioned, to be successful in the industry, you have to be aggressive to the market, but conservative with the balance sheet. This is exactly what Volaris has accomplished. To wrap up, I would like to detail what we mean by a strong balance sheet. We closed the third quarter with $750 million in cash. This represents a 75% increase versus our pandemic cash balance. We have a conservative debt position, even we haven't taken any debt during the pandemic, and 91% of our debt is composed of long-term lease liabilities at a fixed rate. Our financial debt amortization schedule is conservative, and we have no refinancing risk on the horizon.
In addition, we have signed contracts for sale and leaseback agreements for aircraft deliveries through 2025, and we have secured more than $500 million of pre-delivery payments for all aircraft in our order book to be delivered in the same three-year period. In other words, we do not need to go to the market for capital financing over the next three years.
Let me pass it back to Enrique for closing remarks.
Thank you very much to Holger, José Luis, and Jaime. Thank you very much for setting up and detailing everything that we're planning to do in the future and where we are standing at. I want again to strengthen the fact that we have a clear path to long-term profitable growth. I want to remind you guys, we are the lowest cost operator, okay? One of the lowest cost operators in the world, not only Mexico, but in the world, okay? I want to remind you guys that what Jaime stated in the last minutes is that we have a great fleet plan with a great ownership structure, which aims to drive further efficiencies with lower cost going lower. Let me remind you again, the market and profitability leader that Volaris is.
We are the largest airline in Mexico by passengers, we don't care about size, honestly. What we care is about that we can lead profitability levels in the Americas in the future. We want to be absolutely sure that you understand the EBITDA expansion potential that Volaris has. Holger was absolutely clear about the high growth opportunities that we have, how well-positioned to leverage regional shifts in population and transportation trends we are. The likelihood that the U.S. regulatory decision CAT one will give us an additional bump, an upside in our U.S. transborder routes. We also were absolutely clear that we are there with a great plan, a great diversified growth and revenue plan to continue growing the company. Finally, I think Jaime was very clear how strong and flexible our balance sheet and cash generation is.
We strongly think that we'll be a cash generation airline in the next years. The conservative debt position and healthy financing conditions that we developed through the renegotiations of our financial situation and without any help from the government in the last years, has poised Volaris as one of the best balance sheets in the industry in the Latin American countries. This is not enough. Two days ago, Kelly was asking me, how did I feel about this whole thing? After 18 years of having founded the company, let me tell you how I feel. I think we're just starting. We're just starting. I have everything, the team, the financial conditions, the commercial opportunities, and everything I need to continue making this company the greatest ultra-low-cost carrier in the continent, and I am going to do it. You can count on me on that.
Let me put some goals for that. We aim to double our revenue from here through 2025. We aim to double our EBITDA from here to 2025, and we aim to double our free cash generation in the next... from here through 2025. Do you consider these challenges high? Yes, they are high, but I think I have everything to do it and count on me because I will do it. Thank you very much. We'll start the Q&A process, okay? I mean, if you need to move, you need to go to the bathroom, and then we'll set up this thing. You have two, three minutes for doing it, and we'll go to a Q&A. Is that okay with everybody? Great.
One, two, three. Okay, guys, please take your seats. We'll get started. Hello? Our people have some microphones there at side. They will circulate the microphone, please raise your hand and start with your questions.
Yep. Just to coordinate, we ask you to try and keep your to one question per round. Say your institution, your name and institution before asking the question. Helane.
Thank you. Good morning. Thank you. It's Helane Becker from Cowen. I just have a question about the revenue growth opportunities and how you're thinking about getting from where you are now. You said you're gonna double by 2025, but next year you're only growing 10%. How should we handicap that in terms of growing revenue doubling it versus 10% capacity growth? That seems like... It doesn't seem like it's gonna work. Thanks.
Thanks, Helane. Let me just clarify one point. We're committing to a revenue growth, doubling the revenue based on 2019 starting point. That's the $1.8 billion you saw on the slide, and that gives us the growth for 2020, 2021 and so on. Yes, we're going to scale down growth or not scale down. We're gonna have growth of 10% next year with the optionality of growing a little bit faster than that if the market remains as solid as it is right now. Then we are going to go back to our normal growth rates, which are, you know, in the double digits. If you do the math, it does add up.
Duane?
Hey, thanks. Good morning. Congrats on the presentation. Just with respect to, you know, your market position going from, you know, effectively 0% to 42, and you look at, you know, ULCCs representing 72% of the market in Mexico, how does the game plan change? In other words, you know, you continue to execute on the cost side, on the ancillary side, on the growth side. At what point does your very high share maybe require a different game plan, or do you just keep running the same game plan until you get to 100?
Well, Duane, I think the. Thanks for your question. I think the success of Volaris is precisely not changing the game plan. We are very much focused on what we do, our core business, stimulating demand in the VFR, the price-sensitive leisure. I think I try to make the point that there's a lot of growth potential in our core markets and in adjacent markets that are similar to our core, so that's why we are focusing so much on Central America and the US VFR. We are in no way, shape, or form planning to change our model and our recipe for success.
Just a quick follow-up. I'm gonna violate the rules right out of the box here. You made a big growth investment over the last couple years, you know, based on dislocation in the market, which you highlighted. You know, is it fair to think about 2023 as the harvest of those investments, or again, is it more of the same from the last two y ears?
I think it's been tough, Duane, and I recognize it. I think we did start doing what we had to do as a result of the hole that was left by the other players. Having said that, we are in a year where we are ramping up, I mean, the second year where we are ramping up about 29% growth last year, 25% growth this year. I think the most important thing that I would like to leave you guys is that we are absolutely committed on generating profitability in the now, in the route network now, okay? I mean, it's not that we are now committed. I mean, we always were, but we were in the process of putting the seeds there.
That profitability, if you see the third quarter, if you see the fourth quarter of this year, will start being profitable. As I said, the metropolitan area city capacity is now starting to develop profitability. We also are seeing much better profitability in Guadalajara and in Tijuana. The routes in the U.S. are performing extraordinarily well, and now Central America is back with profitability. I think we, yes, we probably passed through a period where profitability was not there, I mean, obviously considering that fuel was very high. We think that with the today's price of the fuel and with the exchange that we have today, the company is perfectly suited to have a 30%+ EBITDA margin in the following years.
Two things. Number one, we get the message that this is a, you know, low price operator, et cetera, et cetera. Could you talk in a little more sophisticated way about your potential for pricing increases in the various markets to get us to that EBITDA margin you were just discussing? Also on the, you know, on the regulatory upgrade in the United States, is this a hostage to other political situations between Mexico and the United States, or is it really a technocratic decision by the FAA? I'm Andrew Wallach at SpringOwl.
Thanks, Andrew Wallach. I'll tackle the first part of your question. Regarding the ability for us to increase, I would call it increase TRASM, rather than increase prices. It's a tale of three regions really. If you look at the domestic market, we are building solid volumes, and we believe that we can continue to build those and increase load factors by 1 or 2 percentage points over the next years. That obviously driven by our ancillary revenue increase and our continued low base fares to drive that stimulation. That's the domestic market, where we're really building volumes and ancillaries, being very competitive against the players in the market there.
We have Central America, which is recovering very nicely, where we have intra-CAM and the business to the U.S., which was, you know, six to 12 months behind the recovery in Mexico and has really come back strong. We're seeing actually the highest TRASMs in the system, in our route network altogether, driven both by quite solid volumes, but also by fare robustness that we're seeing in the U.S. market, anything that touches the U.S., really. The third piece of the equation is the U.S. to Mexico VFR.
Routes that we operate. There, we're also seeing the ability to pass along some of the fuel price increases with really, very healthy fare increases while not sacrificing volume. I'd like to make you aware of that very differentiated picture that we're seeing in our markets.
I think on the category thing, no. It's not subject to anything else. Mexico didn't do well. I mean, we need to recognize that technically our authorities were not at the level that we're supposed to be in that, they're doing a humongous effort, hiring people, training people, developing procedures, developing legal stuff, and getting the budgets for doing that on a sustainable basis. I absolutely think it's a technical thing. It has nothing to do with any other bilateral kind of stuff.
Mike.
Thank you. Congrats on a great presentation. Michael Linenberg with Deutsche Bank. Maybe this is a question for the board, but when you look at where your cash is relative to your market cap, I know Brian brought that up on his introductory comments, and you look at your free cash flow 2019, you know, versus 2025, we're looking at $800 million. Are you at a point... Things have been stabilized, and you've sort of filled in that hole. Are you at a point where you can seriously consider potentially paying a dividend? I mean, I'm gonna move share repos aside. Is that something that we see within the next couple of years?
I'm bringing it up because you have a few other profitable Latin carriers that do pay a dividend, and you have so many companies within your part of the world where it's in their charter, and that's usually what attracts investors. That's what I feel like at this point in the game, you don't have enough investors that really appreciate the Volaris story, and it may be a dividend is what pushes them to take another look. Thank you.
Michael, as you know, we have a legal restriction right now to do any buybacks or dividends. We will consider that. If we have excess cash, we need to refer to the investors, too. Right now, we cannot do it.
What lifts that restriction?
Your amount of your buyback or dividends is capped to your accumulated earnings.
Okay.
Right now, we have an accumulated loss.
Fair enough. Thank you.
Good morning, gentlemen. Stephen Trent from Citi.
Just a second. uncertain.
Sorry.
I think the quick addition I'd give to Their answer is the right answer. Legally, we can't do anything. However, we recognize we now have a weapon that we didn't have before. We have a new tool in the toolkit we didn't have before, which is excess cash. We're growing that cash, and we'll apply it as effectively as we can to grow the business and to support the shareholder group.
Thanks, Brian.
Morning. Stephen Trent from Citi, thank you very much for the presentation, gentlemen. I just had a quick question about the operations in Santa Lucía. You know, any high-level view on how it's working out so far, or how happy you are with the operations and any sort of benchmark, you know, what percentage of your Mexico City metro area flights could come out of that installation by 2025?
Steve, let me see three points first, which are really important. The first thing is the airport is a well-constructed, well technical supplied airport. I think that's something. I want to take that question out of everybody's table first and all. Okay. The second thing is the airport is relatively away from Mexico City versus where we have the airport today. If you compare it versus how much it takes you from Washington, D.C., to the airport, from Paris to Charles de Gaulle or from whatever to Heathrow, et cetera, it's a distance which goes from 55 minutes to 1 hour and 5 minutes, depending on the traffic and the hour you do it.
The third thing, which I think it's really important, is that you need to remember that, I mean, when we see the amount of operations that we have in Guadalajara or that amount of operations that we have in Tijuana, where we have more than 100 operations or 100 operations per day, for populations of what? Five, six million inhabitants in Guadalajara, 4, 5 million inhabitants around the Tijuana area. Here we're talking about we have 200 operations in Mexico City with a population of 32 million inhabitants around that pole. I strongly think that the limitation that we had in slots in the Mexico City airport was a cap for the development of the metropolitan air traffic within Mexico. Having said those three points, we have today nine flights a day.
Yes, sir. nine departures.
9 departures a day. We are operating at 84%, 85% load factor, still fares are low because we are ramping up the routes. That's where we are and how we are performing.
Oh, super. Thank you.
Hey, guys. Good to see you all. It's Santiago from Emerging Variant. I just wanted to understand how to reconcile two facts. One hand, you highlighted a very large opportunity to grow outside the US through your certificate of operations in different countries in Central America, as well as the bus and other opportunities domestically in Mexico. On the other hand, you're telling us you're gonna grow, you know, single digits next year. How do I reconcile, you know, your ultra-low-cost status, your leading cost status, and the fact that you're only gonna grow high single digits next year given the addressable market opportunities you highlighted? Thank you.
Thank you, sir. Santiago, clearly, we have a fantastic opportunity in the medium to long term for growing our business, as I mentioned, to 200 aircraft, in the medium term, 500 routes. There is a sizable opportunity in all of our core markets and beyond. Having said that, we do recognize that the fuel price is very high, and that there is talk about possibility of economic downturn and lower demand. We've been conservative. We have a base growth in place of 10%. That does not mean that that's the final growth for 2023. We have the optionality of ramping up that growth if we see demand at the levels we see it right now.
That's basically the rationale. It shows the flexibility of our business model to quickly ramp up or ramp down growth, if economic conditions change.
I would add, Santiago, that I have one priority, which is being profitable, okay? I have to rather solve that problem at first, okay? Then solve the growth problem. We are working on that. I mean, and I think the second semester will show that clearly. That's the first thing. The second thing is, and you will hear it from Dionisio when he presents our launch, the Mexico's view, okay? I think it is important to say that we're seeing a possible crisis in the U.S. and the economy in the U.S. that might affect Mexico's performance. Having said that, we feel very strong about where Mexico is in the way they have been handling inflation, where Mexico is in its public expenditure.
Third, where Mexico is playing a role, and a very important role in terms of nearshoring, okay? I think it's important to say that in general, the economics and the macroeconomics look very strong for Mexico. It's very difficult to try to reconcile those macroeconomic trends with a problem that could come from the U.S. and how big the impact is going to be. We think it's going to be lower than the impact that could have the U.S. economy. Having said that, we have to be conservative, we have to be rational, and as I said, our first priority is profits.
Hello, Chris Fox, Iron Fox Capital. My question has to do with the relationship between pricing on base fares and the price of your fuel. You saw obviously a big boost in the price of jet fuel in Q2, Q3. You were not obviously able to fully offset it. My question has to do with whether that is mainly kind of a timing issue or whether because you're operating in a country like Mexico, if the price of fuel stayed where it was, you would never be able to fully offset it without losing your load factors. If you could just give us a sense of what the dynamics there are.
Absolutely. I think it's very important to mention that we have two components of total revenue per passenger, and that's really, really important for our model. It's the base fare and the ancillary. We like to think about total revenue per passenger and how we are able to offset fuel prices in the total revenue. Again, I come back to the three points. In the domestic market, we pushed for fare increases, total fare increases in the midsection of the year, June, July. We found that increases in revenue per passenger had a limit, and that volumes were affected. We decided to drive volumes in the domestic market and then really focus on high load factors. You might have seen the traffic report this morning.
We're seeing tremendous load factors in the domestic market, that's really paying off. In the international market, the ability to pass on fuel price increases is easier in the Central American market and in the US-Mexico market. They are U.S. dollar-denominated markets and fares, it's somewhat easier. Now, having said that, we do believe that consistent or sustained fuel, higher fuel prices will eventually lead to higher fares in all of our markets as people adapt to the new reality. That's what we're seeing in Europe and the U.S. as well. I think it's a matter of time when even in Mexico, we're going to see increases in revenue per passenger without affecting volumes.
I think, Chris, it's something which is really important is that you depart from the right comparison, okay? I mean, yes, the U.S. carriers have done a tremendous progress in terms of raising fares. If you look at the domestic market in the U.S., the TRASM improvement has been within 4%-7%. We have done an improvement of more than 5% in TRASM during this year.
Savi?
Thank you. Hey, Savanthi Syth from Raymond James. You know, you've done a really successful job of having, you know, as a ULCC, having a pretty large share in the, in the markets you operate. I wonder is there something different about your markets versus some of the South American markets where ULCCs haven't had as much success? Because if I look at your next targets, you talk about Canada, Caribbean. I'm kinda curious why maybe not kinda move to near South America locations, as kind of the next targets.
I think it has to do with both the characteristics of the Mexican market, which is a huge travel market. We have so many bus trips, we have that bus switching potential, which we've exploited very well. It's also about how we attack the market and how we went about our growth. It's been a very structured, focused exercise over the last 17 years, where we focused on profits from our core business, the VFR and price-sensitive leisure, and we've developed every individual market at a time. We focused on, you know, the Pacific Coast, the northwest of the country with Tijuana, Guadalajara, we obtained leadership positions in the most important secondary markets.
We believe that relative market share, while we don't manage our business for market share, does give us an opportunity to really be the leader in the region and be the airline of choice in those markets. That has really stimulated demand and drove more people to our airline.
Sorry. Is there something in the kind of the South American markets versus like Caribbean and Canada being the next opportunity? Is that just kinda proximity? Is that where your kind of VFR traffic is concentrated or?
Yeah, Renato is probably best to comment about the Brazilian market. I can tell you that we believe that Central America is an extension of the Mexican market with very similar characteristics, and that eventually, we're gonna look for opportunities in the VFR segments in the northern part of South America. We launched Peru, and Colombia this year. We're finding similar customer segments, Peruvians, Colombians living in the U.S., living in Mexico, and that's really our core business. Eventually, we'll look further to new customer segments, and the southbound leisure market from the U.S. to Mexico comes to mind.
Thank you.
Kevin?
Yeah. Thanks, Enrique. Historically, the industry has been characterized by some overcapacity, as been talked about before, irrationality among the players in the market. We had Interjet at one point be very rational with pricing. We also saw that from Viva. Could you just comment for a little bit now on the competitive dynamics that are taking place? Is it a rational group of competitors you're seeing there? Should we expect to see that? What should we expect to see going forward?
Kevin, I think, as I said, I mean, we're leaving for the first time since I arrived almost 20 years ago to Mexico, a real consolidation of the market. We're basically talking about 3 players, okay? That's the first time I see it in 20 years, okay? I mean, when I arrived to Mexico, we had another 11, 12 certificates of operations that were flying, really flying, okay? That's the first thing that we need to consider. The second thing is, I think that Aeroméxico is coming out from a process of restructuring, and it is really important for them to produce results going forward, and good results. I think, I mean, it would be natural to think that they will be acting in a rational way.
Viva is a phenomenal competitor, I'm glad we are competing with them because they only make us better every day, okay? I think from what I have seen in the last 16 years from Viva, is that they behave rational within their parameters, okay? I would say a third thing, which is really important. When you grow, you need capital. I don't think that capital is there for the two players. I think it is really important to think that if there is going to be an outrageous equation of growth, it has to be accompanied by a capital growth in some way in the two players.
Again, Andrew Wallach. Could you talk a little bit, your release this morning talked about very robust, forward demand. Could you just talk about how it looks in the various segments and how far out you're able to see?
Yeah. We publish our schedules, 18 months, 12-18 months in advance. We have a good insight into booking curves, especially for the remainder of this year and the first quarter of next year. We see good volumes come through the pipeline. We're seeing a healthy domestic market in terms of volumes. We're seeing good demand from Central America to the U.S., and also transporter market from Mexico to U.S. with a good fare level as well.
Since no one is asking it, I'm going to do it. 'Cause I guess somewhat you all know about it, and you're afraid about asking it. Yes, the president has been talking about, I mean, opening Fifth Freedoms, opening 8 Freedoms, has been talking about creating a governmental airline, has been talking about a lot of things recently. Since no one is asking me, I want to say that I'm very pleased about all this situation, and it might sound contradictory, but I mean, Volaris is one of the lowest cost operators in the world, okay? When I sit down with the government, I just remind them that, okay? That's the first fact. The second fact, which is really important, is that Volaris flies 46% of its routes without airline competition, okay?
46% of our routes are competing versus the buses. They don't compete against any airline, okay? Which means we are providing the service to the communities that they could be thinking that they are not well-served, okay? Third, we are the lowest price operator, base price operator in the, from Mexico to Argentina, okay? Third, which is really important, and I think it's there, is we're there to continue growing and moving ahead as the high growth opportunities we have planned. I mean, from my perspective, the only thing left is the Eighth Freedom, which is cabotage.
The way I think about that is that is a phenomenal opportunity for our shelves in Costa Rica and El Salvador, because it allows us to fly from Costa Rica and from El Salvador into Mexico to the U.S. I strongly think that, A, we do have the structural advantage and the cost competition level to compete perfectly against any of those structures, A. B, the other thing, it could be a phenomenal opportunity for the only airline that has three airlines, one in Mexico, one in El Salvador, and one in Costa Rica. Yes, Steve.
Forgive me if I missed it, if you mentioned earlier. Talking about your long-term fleet plan, and I know you're moving towards need of available seat mile per gallon. I seem to recall you're something around 103 ASMs per gallon now. I think the U.S. big three get around 70.
As a reference, last year we're at 103 ASMs per gallon. By 2025, we expect to be at 109, and by 2027, around 114.
Okay, super. Thank you.
Thanks. Just Michael Linenberg again. On the, I guess Eighth Freedom, cabotage, more specifically actually on Fifth Freedom, I mean, Holger, you had mentioned earlier that, you know, you do have the right to fly from whether it's Costa Rica or El Salvador within Central America to Mexico and on to the US to get around the CAT II situation. To hit the 18% both this year and last year, did you in fact take advantage of that loophole? You're shaking your head no. It sounds like that you do have the availability, although those airplanes may already be accounted for on those AOC.
Yeah, exactly right. It gets a little bit technical, but what we basically did is, the FAA defined a high water mark of the capacity that was installed between Mexico and the U.S. pre-COVID. As we recovered through COVID, we were able to grow the capacity with our Mexican certificate to the U.S., getting to that high water mark before COVID. On top of that, obviously we have the opportunity that you just mentioned, taking advantage of Fifth Freedom through Mexico to the U.S.
you flew your Christmas schedule in February?
Exactly.
Yeah, that's
Basically.
Okay, guys. If there are any other questions. Thank you very much again for being here. It was a great pleasure to see you personally here. Looking forward to see you, some of you, in the next couple of days on a personal basis. Thank you very much for supporting us through this crisis and being with us through this crisis. Thank you very much for my team, thank you very much for the board, thank you very much for all the Volaris ambassadors that have made an amazing work during these times. We're committed to continue doing it, and as I said, we are just starting. Thank you very much.
We'll finish the webcast. We'll serve lunch for those who are here, then we'll have the presentation by Dionisio. Thank you very much.