Luis Ceriotto
05/16/2021 21:04
Clarín.com
Economy
Updated 05/16/2021 10:38 PM
This Sunday the
last plane
of the
Latam Argentina
fleet
took off from the Metropolitan
Airport
, thus completing the closure of the only airline that
competed against Aerolineas Argentinas, within the local market, for more than 15 years.
"LAN Argentina SA informs that, within the framework of the definitive cessation of operations announced on June 17, the company worked on the process of transferring those aircraft from its fleet that remained in Argentina," the company said in a statement.
In a discreet way, over the last 75 days,
nine
Latam
planes
with Argentine LV registration took off from
Ezeiza, Córdoba and the Aeroparque
to
Santiago de Chile
.
These are rather old equipment, with almost two decades of use (the one that left yesterday, license plate LV-BGI, is a
2002
model
), for which an almost certain destiny awaits as a
freighter
plane
. The company also clarified that it "
did not own
" any of these aircraft. But according to sources in the sector, each of the takeoffs to Santiago de Chile
were carried out with the maximum
possible
discretion
, to avoid
incidents
with the aeronautical unions.
Lan's arrival in Argentina was before its merger with TAM, when it was a company with only Chilean capital.
In March 2005, during the government of Néstor Kirchner, the Chilean airline
bought the flight permits of a local airline
, Aero2000, and together with the law firm
Pérez Alati and Benítes
formed the subsidiary Lan Argentina.
In a few years they positioned themselves with a competitor of Aerolineas Argentinas on routes to the interior, with which they captured approximately
20% of the local market
.
The company had a fleet of
13 Airbus A-320s
that made local and regional flights, as well as
three Boeing B767s that
flew from Ezeiza to Miami and also regional destinations.
During the government of
Cristina Kirchner
, after the nationalization of Aerolineas Argentinas, there was strong pressure against the company, both from the State and from the aeronautical unions. But they were years of good profitability and the company made legal presentations and even lobbied at the level of foreign ministries, to be able to continue operating in the country.
Paradoxically, it was with a more "friendly" government, that of Mauricio Macri, when LATAM
began its downsizing
: after the 2018 devaluation, the company
lost more than 260 million dollars
, only in 2018 and 2019. With the pandemic, it occurred the request for bankruptcy ("Chapter 11") from the LATAM group in the United States. And at noon on June 17, it was the announcement of the closure of LATAM Argentina.
In its presentation to the Ministry of Labor, the company claimed that as a result of the pandemic there was no horizon to continue operating in the country. And he accused Aerolineas Argentinas of unfair competition: according to LATAM, the state airline received from 2009 until then "subsidies equivalent to
5.5 billion dollars
." But throughout the 60 pages that that presentation extends, the company held responsible for its departure, mainly, the
aeronautical unions.
There were 68 measures that LATAM detailed that it tried to carry out to make its operation more profitable within the country. None of these initiatives proposed a salary reduction, or elimination of sources of work: in fact, the company's personnel were framed in the traditional aeronautical unions: APLA (pilots), AAA (Air navigators) and APA (ground personnel). But precisely this strong union incidence in the daily operation was generating a contrast against other subsidiaries of the group, which to this day remain active not only in
Chile
but also in
Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Brazil.
"To date (the proposals to the unions) have only deserved
categorical rejections
, contributing to worsen the dramatic situation of LAN Argentina, prior to the final blow that today involves the pandemic and that make business continuity impossible," the company said in that presentation before the Ministry of Labor, last June.
Outside of LAN Argentina, the group maintains its international activity in the country and a structure of 300 employees that is support personnel and airports to attend the international operation (Lima, Santiago de Chile and São Paulo).
But eleven months after the announcement of its closure, out of
1,715 employees
only
193
remain
, who did not accept the voluntary retirement plans and are now asking the national State to take charge of their work destiny. What they are asking has a precedent: the
Lafsa
airline
, created by the Duhalde government and continued for the next six years by Néstor and Cristina, took over the almost 900 employees of the LAPA and Dinar streams. Lafsa was an airline without planes. Now, with LAN Argentina already liquidated, there are
almost 200 employees without a company
.
