Luis Ceriotto
03/11/2021 1:11 PM
Clarín.com
Economy
Updated 03/11/2021 1:31 PM
Jorge Newbery Airport is the jewel for all airlines operating in the country, since arriving in the heart of the City allows them to
sell more tickets
than when they land in Ezeiza.
After a year, closed first due to the pandemic and then due to an important work on the runway and inside the terminal, this Monday at 7:00 the first flights will take off from Aeroparque, from just two airlines:
Aerolineas and JetSmart
.
Flybondi
will join the day
.
At the moment,
there is no news from other airlines
, both domestic and international.
An important fact is that Aeroparque will once again have flights to
neighboring countries and the region
, after the
failed experience
of the previous government, which had moved those flights to the Ezeiza airport.
But at the moment there are no orders from airlines to operate in the coming days: at least during March,
only Aerolineas Argentinas will make international flights from the Capital
.
As for Flybondi and JetSmart from Argentina, the two
"low cost"
that make domestic flights, the Regulatory Body of the Airport System (ORSNA) only authorized them to make international flights
from Ezeiza
.
In any case, both JetSmart and Flybondi obtained from this body, politically controlled by the
La Cámpora
group
, a not lesser carrot: the valuable
"moorings"
of Aeroparque to make domestic flights.
It was after they
had to move from El Palomar to Ezeiza
, when ORSNA itself blocked, on the grounds that it was not a "safe sanitary corridor", any possibility of reopening that airport, which had become an emblem of politics. macrismo commercial aviation.
As for international airlines, even those that had already operated at Aeroparque, so far
none have sold flights other than those that already land in Ezeiza
.
A survey among some operators showed that there are formal reasons as well as convenience: for the moment, the Ministry of Health only described the Ezeiza airport as a "safe corridor", although these sources estimated that the portfolio now headed by
Carla Vizzotti
could apply the same rating to Aeroparque
before this weekend
.
Even so, in more than one airline they assured that they are waiting for what will be the requirements that the National Civil Aviation Administration (ANAC) demands.
Last year, before the pandemic, the organization headed by
Paola Tamburelli
had already given an indication: to date, you can only fly from Aeroparque, in addition to domestic destinations, to neighboring countries and Peru.
And furthermore, these flights can only be
"point-to-point"
, with 100% of the passengers embarking to those countries as their final destination.
That resolution from the beginning of last year (40/2020) seemed "dedicated" to
limiting the operation of LATAM Argentina,
which at that time made its flights to Chile and Peru, with passengers who mostly embarked to those two destinations
only as one scale to the United States and Europe
.
In the middle, not only did the pandemic
strike,
and
LATAM Argentina closed and compensated its 1,700 employees
.
In addition, the Government changed plans on the fly and transformed Aeroparque into a category "III" international airport, the same one that Ezeiza has today.
Now, at Aeroparque, double-aisle planes can also land.
The ORSNA agreed with the concessionaire Airports Argentina 2000 a strong works plan, which resulted in a wider and longer runway (it was extended 600 meters, totaling
2.7 kilometers
) and significantly enlarged the international passenger terminal, which up to last year it was a small appendix located at the north end of the terminal.
Even so, some of the international airlines this week were
reluctant
to go out to open their business beyond Ezeiza, because of the business downturn that caused the pandemic.
Before the pandemic, the estimate within this sector was that
a route with an occupancy of less than 80% of the seats did not generate profits
.
After the resumption of flights, since the middle of last year, the planes not only arrive in Ezeiza with a mandatory interval of half an hour between each other.
In addition, the average rate of these flights
rarely exceeds 60%,
according to several sources in the sector.
"With flights at a loss, the idea of requesting a place at Aeroparque today
must be thought about more than once,
" they pointed out in one of the airlines. "Is it really convenient today to duplicate personnel structures for flights that do not earn money?" Asked the commercial manager of one of the international airlines. A fact: in that same airline, before the pandemic, they had harshly criticized the decision of the Macri government to force them to change their flights to Ezeiza.
