Alejandro Velasco Astete airport in Cusco reopened yesterday at noon after almost four days without operations because of an attempt by a mob of demonstrators to enter its facilities in the context of the serious political crisis that Peru is going through after the removal of Pedro Castillo as president.
Thousands of passengers were stranded, many of them foreign tourists visiting Machu Picchu, causing the closure to reach international relevance.
But since its reopening, nineteen flights arrived on Friday, all from Lima, while twenty-two others departed from Cusco to the Peruvian capital, some with relevant delay, something reasonable considering the circumstances.
This Saturday, operations are already running more normally. At the time of this publication (7:58 local Peruvian time, 11:58 UTC), six LATAM, Viva, Sky and JetSMART flights have already landed on time, while only one flight, scheduled for 7:40, is 40 minutes late, and another flight from Arequipa has been cancelled (due to the closure of that airport).
For the rest of the day, another 28 flights are scheduled to arrive, all from Lima except one from Puerto Maldonado. As for flights from Cusco, six operations have already departed and another 29 are scheduled for the rest of Saturday, all on schedule except LATAM flight LA2008 to Lima which is scheduled for 18:30, when its original schedule was at 9:25.
The airlines celebrated the resumption of flights to Cusco, and expressed their gratitude for «the total commitment we have received from the General Directorate of Civil Aeronautics to increase the security of the Velasco Astete International Airport and its surroundings, in order to ensure the safety of workers, passengers and operations in general».
I had a vacation planned to visit Cusco and MAcchu Picchu from Dec 25-31. I was planning to take my entire family – 2 adults and kids. In light of the riots and evacuation goin on, I feel that LATAM, peru rail and tour operators should issue a 100% refund. Not doing so is a farce and ridiculous.