Latin American airlines set sights on returning to Venezuela

While Latin American airlines focus on managing numerous economic and regulatory challenges across the continent, some have started to look again at a country that has been out of the picture for much of the last decade as a possible target of expansion: Venezuela. “We are definitely looking at that,” Estuardo Ortiz, chief executive of Chilean ultra-low-cost carrier JetSmart said on 23 October on the sidelines of the ALTA AGM and Airline Leaders Forum, in Cancun, Mexico. JetSmart, which is in the process of gaining certification to establish a subsidiary in neighbouring Colombia – its fourth AOC on the continent – plans to begin flying domestic routes in that country that could also be interesting for the large Venezuelan community residing there. “We’ll be flying to a city in Colombia that is very close to Venezuela,” he says. “The reality of the matter, the driver of this is the VFR market – visiting family and relatives.” Connectivity outside of the country has been curtailed in recent years due to an ongoing socioeconomic and political crisis that has resulted in hyperinflation, the lack of basic necessities and high poverty and crime rates. As a result, millions of Venezuelans have left the country. The diaspora across the continent now numbers between 8 and 10m, says LATAM Airlines Group CE Roberto Alvo. 5m of those are in Colombia alone, Ortiz adds. “People migrate, they have family members, they want to visit them,” Alvo says. LATAM operates flights from Bogota and Lima to the Venezuelan capital Caracas, he adds. Travel to the country has “been lacking” and LATAM will look to increase operations to the country to “give the opportunity to the Venezuelans to go back and visit their families”. Aeromexico, meanwhile, has Venezuela on its long-term radar, but will be busy expanding in a more lucrative market in the foreseeable future. “The main expansion in the next year, year-and-a-half will be to the US,” Aeromexico CE Andres Conesa says. “But certainly after that, maybe.” Panama-based Copa Airlines continues to fly to the country, with five destinations in Venezuela reachable from its “hub of the Americas” headquarters at Tocumen International airport in Panama City - Caracas, Maracaibo, Valencia, Barquisimeto and Barcelona. “Copa never stopped operating flights even with the recent political and currency crisis in Venezuela,” says Pedro Heilbron, Copa’s CE. “But we have adapted our capacity to have more or less flights depending on the situiation. There were times we had to reduce capacity, and times we could add capacity.” <br/>