Abra Group CCO Joe Mohan (left) on stage at Routes Americas 2025.
The holding company parent of Brazilian LCC GOL and Colombian airline Avianca has an eye on growing those carriers and potentially adding more to its portfolio, with Aerolineas Argentinas in its sights.
The Abra Group was formed in May 2022 when the shareholders of Avianca and GOL agreed to combine their airlines under a single holding company. It was founded by now-Chairman Constantino de Oliveira Junior—former CEO at GOL—and now-CEO Adrian Neuhauser, former Avianca CEO. The group also owns Spanish wet-lease all-Airbus A330 operator Wamos Air and in January Abra signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding with Brazilian carrier Azul.
Speaking at the Routes America 2025 conference in Nassau, Bahamas, on Feb. 11, Abra CCO Joe Mohan, a former executive at Continental Airlines and Panama-based Copa, made several references to the International Airlines Group (IAG) model being the closest to that of Abra. IAG is the parent of British Airways, as well as multiple airlines and LCCs in the UK and Europe. Like IAG, Mohan said, Abra wants to maintain the individual brands, cultures and executive teams of each of its airlines, which operate independently.
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But Mohan acknowledged that Abra would benefit from being larger. “Does it need scale? I think so,” he said. “We are collectively running good airlines, yet one [Avianca] has been through Chapter 11 and another [GOL] is emerging from Chapter 11. Scale can be part of the solution and gives you a little more room to deal with some of the regulatory issues, but it has to be done on a regional basis.”
Mohan said he thought Aerolineas “could be a potentially great member of Abra,” but added that everyone was interested in the Argentinian carrier as a potential consolidation prospect. “We would want to be first in line when that happens,” he said.
For now, Mohan said the group mission is to coordinate the networks of its current airlines and focus on seamless service while cleaning up the balance sheets of its South American carriers. GOL is expected to emerge from U.S. Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this spring.
“GOL was launched 20 years ago and brought the [ULCC] role to Brazil that had the effect of stimulating the market,” Mohan said. “Avianca came out of Chapter 11 and had been a full-service carrier, but pivoted to the low-cost model. It’s in our DNA that we make sure we are the lowest cost carrier in our markets.”
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