El Palomar airport, hostage to internal bidding within the ruling party itself

Luis Ceriotto

11/23/2020 6:01 AM

• Clarín.com

• Economy

Updated 11/23/2020 6:01 AM

The

airport

divides the ruling party in these hours with a coincident symmetry with what happens at the government level: while the hard Christianity, through

, keeps the airport closed and suffocating its only tenant, the "low cost"

, massista and albertista leaders such as the Minister of Transport,

and the mayor of Hurlingham,

, ask for its reopening.

For its detractors, it is clear: El Palomar is an airport that, if open, would do so for the operation of

, Flybondi, which also

in the country.

At the moment, the Flybondi fleet is only two planes, of which one is "parked"

and the other left last week

, for a technical review that can take weeks.

Workers' protest in front of the El Palomar airport, last August.

Photo Rafael Mario Quinteros.

However, that is not why El Palomar is closed, but because an official signed a resolution that established that the only airport that can be used today in the AMBA area is Ezeiza.

The reason?

It is the only "safe sanitary corridor", according to the resolution signed by

, vice president of the

(ORSNA).

Muriel is also a leader of the La Cámpora group.

In turn, Cámpora has the reins of

, the state airline to which the "low cost" companies have presented competition since they began to fly in February 2018. The president of Aerolineas is

, who politically responds to

, national senator and one of the founding leaders of La Cámpora.

But

directly

at El Palomar

, not counting the indirect jobs generated by the airport's activity.

For this reason, the Minister of Transport, Mario Meoni, is in favor of its reopening.

He said it this weekend to the newspaper

: "Today I am in favor of

El Palomar

," he said.

In reality, Meoni was always skeptical, since he assumes that for several years there will be fewer flights, and in a context in which Aeroparque will double its flight capacity once it reopens, around February or March.

But Meoni also does not want to carry the backpack of

.

During his tenure, LATAM Argentina has already closed, which in July slammed the door,

, and ended with

.

The charter airline

with

,

has also just

.

"El Palomar will be operational again

," said Meoni, this week.

He is not alone within the official ranks.

The mayor of Hurlingham, Juan Zabaleta, said that "80% of the people" in his party are in favor of reopening the airport, using a poll by

.

Meoni responds politically to

, but Zabaleta is one of the leaders that today are directly allied to

.

Another official mayor,

, from Morón, and

, from Juntos para el Cambio,

also called for the reopening

of Tres de Febrero

.

The three Buenos Aires parties have interference over the El Palomar property, the airport that the previous government transformed into a symbol of the "airplane revolution."

The arrival of the low cost was gradual, and seen in perspective it

, just two years: in February 2018 the first Flybondi plane took off from El Palomar, and in October of that year Norwegian Argentina started from Aeroparque.

Finally, in March 2019, the third "low cost" arrived, JetSmart, which until the pandemic also used El Palomar as a base.

In those two years, between the three companies they

.

And they did so basically by adding passengers, since in that same period the number of passengers who flew with Aerolineas

, with the exception of the final stretch of 2019, after the post-STEP devaluation.

The aeronautical unions accused anyway that the "low cost" grew at the expense of Aerolineas: even when it added more passengers, the unions accused that the "low cost" subtracted a

.

But the bottom line was that the "low cost" had been able to avoid almost completely the influence of these unions, supported by the Macri government.

The competition they proposed was not only commercial, but

The former Norwegian Argentina left the country in December 2019: days before the Fernández's inauguration, it sold its assets to JetSmart.

This last company, owned by the US investment fund

, is controlled by a veteran businessman,

, who has known Argentina for decades.

He was a controlling shareholder of the Alpargatas textile company through Newbridge, the previous name of his investment fund.

JetSmart

: the same weekend in which the ORSNA blocked the El Palomar airport, it decided to

to return to regular domestic flights.

On Thursday it resumed its activities, with a first flight to Neuquén.

Was there a negotiation with La Cámpora?

What happened was a

: another ORSNA resolution,

(Muriel), which

the airport charges for airlines that moved from El Palomar to Ezeiza.

Flybondi, on the other hand, did not move from El Palomar and chose to

, with different legal presentations against the ORSNA.

Also pending approval is a series of requests for flight permits that he submitted to the

(ANAC).

Its directors, who respond to another US investment fund (

, play chess: their position is that despite everything said and published, the company

that El Palomar is disqualified.

And therefore, the airport is

Pablo Ceriani, head of Aerolineas Argentinas.

The unions, meanwhile, play their game, but looking to the sides: last week they staged a caravan to claim for the jobs of the airlines that were left behind, both during the macrismo and in the current government.

Where did the caravan go?

By the ministries of

, whose head, Claudio Moroni, they accuse of having ignored the LATAM conflict (which has already

most of its employees).

And the caravan stopped especially in front of the Ministry of 

.

Where they defend the reopening of El Palomar.

Look also

JetSmart returns to domestic flights, from Ezeiza

Airlines: aeronautical unions ask for salary increases