Avianca put out a release on Thursday about elevating the travel experience for US customers. It runs through expanded business class, new economy benefits, Wi-Fi, lounges, a new top loyalty tier, and a redesigned long-haul cabin arriving in 2027.
I read it twice, and the second time I stopped reading it as an announcement and started reading it as a list. Because almost every item on it is Avianca adding back something a full-service airline is normally assumed to have already.
I should say upfront that I have flown Avianca and I don't like flying Avianca. So take the opinions here as mine. But the facts in this piece are all from Avianca's own release, and they're the more interesting part.
"Seating within the first three rows"
Start with the headline item. Business Class Americas is now available on 100% of Avianca's routes within the Americas, including domestic flights in Colombia, Ecuador and Guatemala. Good, on the face of it.
Then Avianca describes what you get: priority services on the ground, lounge access, extra baggage, LifeMiles accrual, and "seating within the first three rows of the aircraft."
That's the airline's own phrasing. Not lie-flat. Not a dedicated cabin. Not even a specific seat. Seating within the first three rows. It's followed by the line "onboard service is tailored according to the duration of each flight," which is a graceful way of saying that on a short flight there isn't much of it.
Here's the distinction the release doesn't spell out, and it's the one that matters most.
Avianca sells two entirely different things under the business class heading. INSIGNIA by Avianca, the product with the actual seat, runs on its 787s, on flights to Madrid, Barcelona, London and Paris, and on New York services operated by the widebody. That's the one getting private suites and lie-flat beds in 2027.
Business Class Americas is the other one. It's the A320 product, and it's what you get on almost everything else, including every US route not flown by a 787.
Avianca's fleet is 140 aircraft, and the overwhelming majority are A320s. On an A320 there is no separate business cabin to be in, so what you're buying is the front of the plane, a blocked middle seat, and a lounge pass. That's a recliner, and it's roughly what US carriers sell as domestic first. The difference is that American and Delta don't have a Star Alliance badge inviting you to assume otherwise.
So when Avianca says business class is now available on 100% of its routes in the Americas, that's true. It just doesn't mean what a lot of people booking it will think it means.
This is the thing I find genuinely frustrating about Avianca, and it's why I'd rather they said it plainly. I have paid for the front of an Avianca A320 expecting something closer to what the alliance implies, and got a slightly wider economy seat with a curtain in front of it.
The economy list reads like a list of past complaints
Here's where the release becomes unintentionally revealing.
A 22-pound carry-on is now included in all fares on international flights, including to and from the US. Which means, until now, it wasn't. On a Star Alliance carrier, on an international flight.
Food and beverages are now included on international flights within the Americas lasting more than three and a half hours. Which means, until now, they weren't. And note the threshold: at three hours and twenty minutes, you're still buying your own lunch. Café del Cielo, the onboard sales service, continues alongside it.
Wi-Fi is being "progressively" rolled out across the fleet. Which means most of the fleet doesn't have it yet.
None of that is a scandal. Plenty of airlines charge for bags and food. But those airlines are called low-cost carriers, and they don't generally market their front rows as business class to passengers connecting from a Lufthansa long-haul.
I'll add my own data point, for what it's worth as one flight. On a flight of over six hours from Guayaquil to New York, the service I got amounted to two passes with water, one near the start and one near the end. Under the policy announced this week, that route would now include food. Which tells you that the policy announced this week is a real improvement, and tells you what it's improving on.
The part that's actually good
I want to be fair, because two things in here are genuinely worth something.
The 2027 INSIGNIA cabin sounds like a real business class, and on the 787 there's a genuine cabin to put it in. Private suites with sliding doors, fully lie-flat seats with 180-degree recline, pajamas by Maaji, Meridian noise-canceling headphones, amenity kits made with artisans from the Chimichagua community, and a menu from chefs Álvaro Clavijo and Rafael Buitrago. If that arrives as described, it's a competitive long-haul product and I'd happily fly it.
And the network numbers are not small. More than 400 weekly flights, 41 routes from the US into Central and South America, and 2.57 million passengers carried to and from the US in the first half of 2026, up 9.2% year on year. Avianca connects a lot of places nobody else connects, and for many of those city pairs it's the only sensible option. That's worth real money to a lot of travelers, and it's the reason the airline can get away with the rest.
What it actually is
Here's my read, and it isn't a hostile one.
Avianca came out of restructuring as a hybrid. It unbundled fares, charged for the things low-cost carriers charge for, and kept the Star Alliance membership, the lounges and the loyalty program that make it look like a legacy carrier. That's a deliberate commercial model, not incompetence, and on price it often works out well for passengers.
The problem is the gap between the model and the signaling. A passenger booking "Business Class" on a Star Alliance member has a set of expectations, and "seating within the first three rows" is not it. The mismatch isn't in the product. It's in the label.
So this week's announcements are good news, and I'd encourage anyone reading it to notice what the good news consists of. A free carry-on on international flights. A meal if your flight is long enough. Wi-Fi, eventually. A lie-flat seat in 2027, on some aircraft, on some routes.
Everything on that list should be welcomed. It's just worth being honest that most of it is Avianca catching up to where passengers already assumed it was.
