Argentina: Flybondi suspends flights due to foreign exchange restrictions

Redacción - Aviación al Día

2 years ago

The Argentine low-cost airline Flybondi announced on Tuesday the cancellation of at least 22 flights due to the lack of authorization from the Government to transfer payments in dollars abroad and not being able to lease two of the aircrafts for its fleet, in the midst of the shortage of foreign currency that the South American country is dragging along.

Through a communiqué to its passengers, Flybondi explained that it has to “stop operating a minor part” of its fleet and “cancel 22 flights”, as well as operational adjustments that imply changes in the “schedule of 10 flights”.

The airline said in a statement that the cancellations and schedule changes will affect 5,500 passengers between June 7 and 9.

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“Currently, there are official measures that are restrictive for companies that need access to foreign currency to make payments abroad. At Flybondi we contract several specialized services abroad that are paid in dollars. In order to do so, we must request authorization periodically, but in the last two months we have not received the approvals”, explained the company in the statement to passengers.

“We have been accumulating defaults in payments and the most critical one is the aircraft leasing”, said the company, which started operating five years ago, has 21 % of the Argentine domestic market share and transports 300 thousand people per month.

Flybondi pointed out that the lack of authorization to make payments abroad for services forces it to leave two airplanes on the ground, since “the non-compliance of payments impacts on the leasing of the aircrafts and on the operation”.

And it does not rule out “new cancellations and delays in the service if the situation is not normalized”.

The Ministry of Economy restricts authorizations and the Central Bank of Argentina restricts the delivery of foreign currency to pay for imports of goods and services due to the shortage of international reserves, which results in the lack of supplies or difficulties to pay for services and in the proliferation of parallel exchange rates in the financial and informal market.

With information from EFE

Photo: Guspat19/Wikipedia