“We prefer prudence right now. We have already expressed our rejection of the order,” said Gonzalo Pérez Corral, general manager of JetSmart Argentina.
The airline JetSmart will not follow in the footsteps of its competitor Flybondi to Justice to challenge the decree ordering the re-establishment of tariff bands on cabotage aviation. Its directors have assured that they will wait for the Government to identify these bands with concrete values, before making a decision.
But they demanded, at the same time, a policy of “Open sky” and that is disputed “All regulations are detrimental to the country and to aviation in general.”
Both JetSmart and Flybondi, both US capitals, are currently the only competitors that state-owned Aerolineas Argentinas has in the cabotage market. And they are the main ones affected by Decree 879 issued by the Government at the end of last year.
That law mandates the continuation of a system of maximum and minimum tariff bands, which were repealed in 2018, during the Mauricio Macri government, although they have been melted by inflation since the last two years of government by Cristina Kirchner.
Decree 879 describes competition without a minimum and maximum framework for prices as “destructive”. Both JetSmart and Flybondi currently have available seats which costs 50% less than airlines charge at both destinations.
The term for the installation of new bands is six months from the day of Christmas Eve on which the law is published. Both the National Civil Aviation Administration (ANAC) and the Ministry of Transport are holding meetings with airlines, in search of some sort of consensus.
At Flybondi they decided not to wait for the Government to release new bands. On Feb. 22, they presented a precautionary measure against Decree 879, which they said violates free competition. That request was filed in the federal Administrative Litigation court presiding over Gabriel Cayssials, which last week finalized all requests for reports he sent to official bodies.
At JetSmart they came from suffering their own judicial setback: in January, they filed a precautionary measure so that more space was given to their Aeroparque planes. The request was denied by the Fair Chamber of the Federal Civil and Commercial Chamber.
“Right now, we prefer prudence, depending on how the regulation takes place. We have already expressed our most sincere rejection of any regulation, ”Gonzalo Pérez Corral, general manager of JetSmart Argentina, said Monday.
Pérez Corral, along with the airline’s general director, Estuardo Ortiz, led a conference where they announced that from September they will start flying from Ezeiza to Lima. “We want to understand in more detail what the final details of this instrument will be,” Pérez Corral added.
Source: Clarin
