Viva Aerobus sold fares minus the airport fee — PROFECO fined it 4.8M pesos

Viva Aerobus, Mexico's low-cost airline, advertised fares — including headline campaigns of trips for as little as 39 pesos — at prices that did not include the Tarifa de Uso de Aeropuerto, the airport charge every passenger must pay, and other mandatory costs. The real price arrived later. The restrictions that qualified the headline sat in illegible small print while the hook price was displayed large.

PROFECO notified preventive measures on 4 September 2021, giving the airline 24 hours to suspend the misleading advertising, and announced a fine of 4.8 million pesos. The case landed in the same sweep as BP's fuel claims, Vips' menu pricing and Sony's cancelled PS5 pre-sale — four brands named by name in the president's morning press conference.

The mechanism is the same one Canada's Competition Bureau was pricing at millions — drip pricing — with one local ingredient: the TUA is large, government-set and unavoidable, so excluding it makes every fare look cheaper than it can ever be. A fare advertised without its mandatory charges is not a fare.