The 70% decrease in the maximum number of passengers that can enter Argentina by air, ruled by the government of that country last Friday, continues to attract criticism from the different associations that make up the commercial aviation industry.
The voices of IATA and ALTA were joined this Sunday by the Chamber of Air Lines in Argentina – JURCA, which indicated that this «untimely» reduction means that the government ordered a «virtual closure of borders», and that all companies have been «strongly affected», having to cancel or reschedule the remaining flights for June, in some cases with previously obtained authorizations.
“Today, several airlines have received cancellations of flights that were approved until the end of the month, some were even informed on the same day of the flight, which leaves our passengers with the unexpected surprise of not being able to return. Considering that there are cases of airlines that have only one flight for the next fifteen days from some destinations, this leaves our passengers in a really worrying situation due to the lack of connectivity options,” commented Felipe Baravalle, Executive Director of JURCA, who also indicated that airlines are as surprised as the passengers by the drastic nature of this measure, of which they were not participants.
«We ask the authorities to receive us to present return options for the thousands of passengers who will be affected,» Baravalle continued. “We are extremely concerned about the connectivity of our country. It can be seen how several companies have stopped operating and others have suspended their operations with our country, waiting to see when it is feasible to restart their operations or considering not to return. Let us keep in mind that before the pandemic we had approximately 155 daily international landings throughout the country (information obtained from EANA February 2020) and today we will have 3 daily landings, almost 2% of the above,” he concluded.
And the key point is the growing uncertainty that the entire commercial aviation system faces at a time when every dollar entered or every dollar lost counts as never before. But also for passengers, many of whom travel for reasons that go beyond tourism (labor issues, family reunification, health, etc.).
