Argentina to spend over $880m to prop up state airline

Argentina may have to dole out at least $880m in subsidies this year to keep its state airline afloat, further weighing on government finances after the nation’s ninth sovereign default. Aerolineas Argentinas President Pablo Ceriani said the carrier’s budget shortfalls, up from about $680m last year, will persist until demand rebounds, which isn’t expected for a couple of years. The carrier probably won’t break even for as many as five years after that, he said. “One of the conditions for profitability is demand, and that won’t be normal until 2022,” Ceriani said from the airline’s headquarters in local airport Aeroparque Internacional Jorge Newbery. “We’re planning to curb structural losses in a sustained way from then onwards. That’s the reasonable horizon in this situation.” Like airlines worldwide, Aerolineas Argentinas’s operations have been paralyzed by coronavirus fallout. Argentina implemented some of the earliest and harshest measures in Latin America to halt the spread of the virus, such as halting commercial flights until Sept. 1. But unlike the airline’s global peers, Aerolineas Argentinas is committed to weathering the crisis without any layoffs for its 12,000 employees, according to Ceriani. “It’s a policy aimed at keeping jobs,” he said. “Cutting incomes hurts workers already going through an economic crisis.”<br/>