IAG-owned carrier LEVEL secures own AOC, to use own two-letter code from 2025

LEVEL, the budget long-haul brand owned by International Airlines Group (IAG), has secured its own air operator’s certificate (AOC) and will commence flights as a separate legal entity using its own two-letter flight prefix code in 2025. The carrier has also announced fleet expansion plans, with a seventh Airbus A330-200 due to be added to its fleet “within weeks”.

The process of securing a separate AOC for LEVEL began back in 2023 with IAG wanting to run the airline as a separate entity with its own accounting, operational, and legal processes. Initially set up in 2017, LEVEL has up until now been operating as a subsidiary of Iberia, Spain’s national airline and a keystone member of IAG, along with British Airways. Other airlines operating in the Group include Irish carrier Aer Lingus, and low-cost airline Vueling.

According to LEVEL’s CEO Rafael Jiménez Hoyos, who took the reins of the Spanish carrier in October 2024, LEVEL securing its own AOC provides the carrier “with greater agility to achieve its strategic objectives.”“This milestone marks the beginning of a new stage, in which we will continue working with the same commitment to consolidate LEVEL as an efficient, innovative, and customer-oriented airline, connecting Barcelona with the world directly and without stops,” Jiménez Hoyos added.

Procy / ShutterstockAccording to ch-aviation, LEVEL currently operates a fleet of six Airbus A330-200s that operate in a two-class configuration seating between 275 and 311 passengers. The cabins feature both economy and premium economy seating. With a seventh aircraft due to join the fleet imminently, the carrier is expecting its eight aircraft sometime in 2026.

Securing its own AOC will mean the airline will now begin the final necessary processes to begin operating as a separate entity from Iberia with its own crewing and flight operations departments. This process is expected to continue into 2025 when the carrier will begin using its IATA-assigned ‘LL’ two-letter code and ICAO code ‘LVL’ along with its ‘Dali’ callsign on all flights.   

So far, the newly-established airline has not revealed any significant plans to extend its existing route network, despite the fleet expansion. The carrier says it will continue to focus on its existing services from its hub at Barcelona-El Prat Airport (BCN) to Boston (BOS), Buenos Aires (EZE), Miami (MIA), New York-JFK (JFK), Santiago de Chile (SCL), Los Angeles (LAX), and San Francisco (SFO) with the last two being served on a seasonal basis.

GCmap.comSince 2019, the airline has doubled its annual capacity, offering almost one million seats in 2024. Additionally, for the upcoming winter 2024-25 season, the carrier has increased its flights to the US by 9% year-on-year, putting on sale around 300,000 seats. In September 2024, LEVEL flew around 627,000 passengers, a 25.2% increase over the same period in 2023, with a reported load factor of 95.3%,

In addition to operating LEVEL as a low-cost long-haul carrier, IAG also owned Austrian-based subsidiary LEVEL Europe between July 2018 and March 2020 before the division was then suddenly shut down and filed for insolvency. At the time of its demise, the Vienna-based airline operated a fleet of two A320s and four A321s.

IAG later stated that the airline was not economically sustainable due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resultant effect on air travel in Europe. During its short existence, the airline operated out of bases at Amsterdam-Schiphol Airport (AMS) and Vienna Airport (VIE) serving short-haul destinations within Europe.

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