Spanish low-cost long-haul airline LEVEL saw good growth in 2024. Now with its own air operator certificate, it is preparing for more. Richard Schuurman spoke to CEO Rafael Jiménez Hoyos to find out what’s on the horizon

LEVEL started operations on June 1, 2017 as an airline brand with low-cost long-haul flights operated by Iberia

AIRBUS/A DOUMENJOU/ MASTER FILMS

With a fleet of seven Airbus A330s that carried 846,000 passengers in 2024, LEVEL is a minnow within the huge pond that is International Consolidated Airlines Group (IAG). Its Spanish sisters Iberia (92 aircraft, 25.8 million passengers) and Vueling (142 aircraft, 38.2 million passengers) are much larger fish, as are British Airways (296 aircraft, 46.2 million passengers) and Aer Lingus (58 aircraft, 11 million passengers). LEVEL is so small that IAG says in its annual reports that it “does not exceed the quantitative thresholds to be reportable, and management has concluded that there are currently no other reasons why LEVEL should be separately disclosed”. It begs the question: why does LEVEL exist?

Concept

To understand the concept, you have to go back to 2017. In February of that year, the IAG Board of Directors approved the proposal to launch a low-cost, long-haul brand in response to increased competition in the market. On June 1, it launched services out of the Catalonian city with two Iberia-operated Airbus A330-200s in its own white-green-blue livery to San Francisco (Oakland), Los Angeles, Punta Cana and Buenos Aires.

In IAG’s 2017 annual report, then-CEO Willie Walsh said of LEVEL: “We knew the business model worked – that combination of having a low-cost base and targeting an underserved market with a great customer proposition is a winning formula. The success we’ve recorded so far really has demonstrated that the timing was right, the initiative was right and that the brand is great. It’s given us great confidence to expand LEVEL and you are going to see more of that in 2018.” The key was the low costs and offering a price-sensitive leisure proposition in partnership with IAG members.

The 2018 report added: “LEVEL is not a traditional, vertically integrated airline business. Instead, the LEVEL model separates the production and operational aspects from the commercial and customer-facing elements of the business. As a result, LEVEL is agile and able to rapidly take advantage of new opportunities.”

During 2018, LEVEL added two A330s to the fleet, basing them at Paris/Orly, from where OpenSkies (an IAG-owned French airline operated between 2008 and 2020) flew them to Pointe-à-Pitre, Fort-de-France, New York/Newark and Montréal under the brand LEVEL France. Boston was added from Barcelona thanks to a third A330 there. LEVEL also launched a short-haul branch – dubbed LEVEL Europe – which was based in Vienna and officially run by Anisec Luftfahrt, the remains of a failed plan by Vueling to take over Austrian carrier Niki. Four Airbus A321ceos flew to London, Paris, Barcelona, Ibiza and Dubrovnik. That year, LEVEL carried 888,000 passengers to 25 destinations on nine aircraft.