Plus Ultra Líneas Aéreas (PU, Madrid Barajas) has announced it will shortly end its Madrid Barajas-Santo Domingo Las Américas, Dominican Republic service amid increasing tough competition with established carriers Iberia (IB, Madrid Barajas) and Air Europa (UX, Palma de Mallorca) in the South American market. The service, which launched in July last year as a 2x weekly service, was reduced to a weekly flight in October on the grounds, Spanish tourism news agency Preferente claims, of poor consumer uptake.
As such, the airline's website currently shows no flights to the Dominican Republic available beyond February 11. Should Plus Ultra indeed withdraw from the route, it will have Lima International, Peru, as its only other scheduled destination.
It is recalled, however, that in September, Plus Ultra announced it would add a third A340-300 to its fleet for the proposed launch of flights to Mexico and Chile later this year.
Founded in 2011, Plus Ultra Líneas Aéreas secured its AOC in July 2015 with commercial services only launching in June 2016. It currently operates a pair of ex-Gulf Air (GF, Bahrain International) A340-300s leased from Novus Aviation Capital.
Aside from regular passenger flights and several brief ACMI leasing contracts, Plus Ultra has also dabbled in the long haul charter market albeit with questionable success. In July last year, the carrier lost/axed contracts with Spanish tour operators Politours and Aquatravel to conduct flights to the Caribbean, Central America, and Thailand after the services, again, suffered from poor pre-launch uptakes.
