The Air company Andes it was cleared to resume its flights, after its aircraft were permanently grounded more than three years ago. The airline belongs to the entrepreneur Miguel Ziadi -who lives in the United States- and according to industry sources, in this new stage he will be dedicated exclusively to charter flights which will start in June.
The news was released by the head of the National Civil Aviation Agency (ANAC), Paula Tamburelli, which reported that the agency has given its “endorsement” to the “recertification” of Andes, who had grounded his planes after a final flight to Chubut weeks before the pandemic. Precisely, a swelling unpaid debt of this province, which subsidized flights from the Andes to Puerto Madryn and Comodoro Rivadavia, had been the trigger for the latest crisis.
Sources indicated that Ziadi will contract this time with input from US investors to finance the operation and leasing of two new aircraft, Boeing 737-800one of which has been in Ezeiza for more than six months and has so far only been used for test flights of the pilots.
Andes, founded in 2005, had passed through the era of early Kirchnerism with a fleet of older MD aircraft acquired by Austral (the headrests kept the condor of Aerolíneas Argentinas) and a series of agreements with the provinces which guaranteed the company a seating plan sold to operate.
During Macrismo’s “airplane revolution,” Andes upped the ante and added a leased fleet of four Boeing 737s to the MDswith which he came to carry two million passengers during 2018.
But the devaluation of that year, added to the entry of “low cost” competitors, soon led the company, whose general manager is Horacio Penestre, to sell inversion with the expansion e returned leased Boeings.
Andes continued to operate the MDs, on both regular and charter flights, but by then had built up significant debt, both from the failed expansion and from airport taxes and salary arrears. The last flight was in March 2020, days before all planes were grounded due to the pandemic.
In August last year, Paola Tamburelli he was photographed in the ANAC headquarters together with Ziadi and published on the networks, with the stamp of the ANAC, that the Andes will fly again “in the short term”. Two months later it was the airline itself that announced that “by the end of the year” (2022) it would resume flying.
none of that happened. However, in the central Andes he participated in the revival of Chamber of Airlines of the Argentine Republic (CLARA), an entity that was deactivated a decade ago and has been reactivated sign a collective labor agreement with the Pilots Association (APLA).
That agreement, signed at the end of December last year, had been denounced by the unions of the “low cost” workers JetSmart and Flybondi, who stated that what was being asked was “the closure” of these two airlines.
The agreement was signed by Pablo Birò on behalf of the pilots. And as head of CLARA he signed on Horace PenestreAndes’ manager, despite the fact that the airline was at a standstill without having been enabled of the ANAC. Now, You already have those documents in order.
Source: Clarin
