Vaya Con Dios, VivaAerobus

Discount airliner VivaAerobus, which launched last year amidst a splashy ad campaign touting flights to Cancun for less than ten bucks, announced today that it is axing all flights to and from Austin at the end of the month and abandoning the city altogether.

The Mexican airliner blamed the recent H1N1 flu outbreak for causing an "unprecedented" number of booking cancellations and a sharp decline in passengers and revenue. According to today's article in Austin Business Journal, half of VivaAerobus' customers this month have canceled their trips, and as many as thirty percent of those who kept their itineraries simply failed to show up for their flights.

VivaAerobus will cease its Austin operations on May 31; anyone who has a ticket for travel after that deadline will be receiving a refund by May 26. The South Terminal at Austin-Bergstrom, which the company used exclusively, will also be shut down. According to the latest traffic figures, VivaAerobus accounted for less than 1% of ABIA's total activity from January-March of this year.