The airline Ultra Air suspends its operations

The low-cost airline Ultra Air has announced this Wednesday the cessation of its activities.

Through a statement, it has reported that it will not fly on any of the routes scheduled as of this Thursday, March 30, hours before the start of the Easter holidays.

In the text, the company attributes its bankruptcy to "macroeconomic situations in the industry", among which it mentions the increase in fuel costs and the exchange rate, which led it to "operate at a deficit" in recent months.

In the same statement, the company pledges to "work to minimize the impact" on airline users, and invited its customers to submit their requests to servicioalcliente@ultraair.com and on its page, www.ultraair.com .

The website's calendars, which is still live, already have an icon on every day after March 29 indicating that there are no seats available.

The Minister of Transportation, Guillermo Reyes, confirmed that the president of Ultra Air, William Shaw, notified him of the cessation of operations of the company, which had been providing its services with three planes.

In addition, he reported that a contingency plan has already been implemented and a unified command post has been activated, together with the Civil Aeronautics and the Superintendencies of Industry and Commerce and Transportation, to attend to the contingency.

Reyes added: “We have requested the president and the directives of Ultra to send us the status of passengers and confirmed flights that they had for these days and for Easter.

We are going to demand rescheduling or cash payment.”

He also indicated that there will be personnel from the superintendencies at the Cartagena and San Andrés airports to attend to the concerns or claims of the affected passengers.

Similarly, Reyes announced that Avianca will participate in serving travelers who have already purchased Ultra services: there will be "free protection" for those who have scheduled flights with Ultra Air and Viva Air until April 1.

The benefit will depend on the space and the order of arrival.

And there will be "protection rates for routes in national and international destinations" for customers of the same two airlines until April 9.

The winds of crisis in Ultra Air had already been felt less than a week ago.

On March 23, the airline had announced a pause in the sale of air tickets and the suspension of its flights until April 30.

At that time, the Superintendency of Transportation implemented some measures to prevent economic problems from affecting both customers and suppliers.

The state entity, which is in charge of supervising and regulating companies dedicated to transportation in the country, spoke of the "low liquidity" of the company and the risk of default to its creditors.

A day later, Ultra Air reported that flight sales had returned to normal.

As explained in a statement, its shareholders had injected fresh capital for an undisclosed amount.

With this and with the support of the state authorities, he hoped to send a message of calm to both his clients and the aeronautical sector.

However, in light of Thursday's announcement, none of these measures had the desired effect.

The fall of the company is added to the one that occurred on February 28 with another

airline , Viva Air, which unexpectedly announced the cancellation of all its flights and unleashed chaos in several of the main airports in Colombia, with hundreds of passengers stranded for several hours.

Thus, the Ultra Air news hits an already resentful sector.

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