Routes and airlines: the reduced offer at Santiago Airport due to Covid-19



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Exactly one year ago, the Arturo Merino Benítez Airport in Santiago (AMB) connected the Chilean capital with 63 direct international destinations, which even before March 2019 reached 66 – Neuquén, San Juan and Tucumán were erased, after the cessation of the boom of Argentine visitors. In addition, the airport was home to 23 active airlines and received 24.6 million passengers at the end of 2019. Today, the contrast is strong.

The global pandemic of the coronavirus has wreaked havoc in the airline industry and the reality of the terminal located in Pudahuel is that it connects with only 14 direct routes, 78% fewer destinations available than a year ago for those who need to travel. Meanwhile, in the same period, the number of airlines active in this area has fallen by more than half. Only 10 are offering a limited number of flights. The private concessionaire of the Santiago terminal, Nueva Pudahuel, estimates that this 2020 will close with a flow of 8 million passengers, a third of what was achieved last year and the same level that was reached in 2007. They even calculate that the The pandemic will mean a total loss over time of around 150 million passengers, which is the same order of magnitude of passengers handled by the airport’s previous concessionaire during its 17 years with the administration. They envision that the passenger market would recover its pre-pandemic flow levels only in 2024.

Among the direct connectivity losses that AMB has suffered, different cases stand out. One of them is the closure of direct flights to two continents, Asia and Oceania. There were no flights to Africa, so today only flights are being operated within America and with Europe. What’s more, three of the six destinations to Europe that were a year ago are currently not available: Barcelona, ​​Rome and London.

There are relevant cities in America that no longer have a connection with Santiago, such as Caracas, Quito, La Paz, Rio de Janeiro and Toronto. While Lima, Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires, which were the cities with the highest number of weekly frequencies with Santiago, with 91 flights the first two and 84 the Argentine capital, suffered a drastic reduction. Now the weekly frequencies are 7 flights with Sao Paulo, 6 with Lima and 2 with Buenos Aires. The loss of competition towards the Argentine capital stands out, where in 2019 Latam Airlines, JetSmart, SKY, Aerolineas Argentinas, Air Canada and KLM operated. Today the route is covered only by Latam and the Argentine state. Towards Sao Paulo GOL and SKY also left momentarily, leaving only Latam. Miami became the city that offers the highest frequencies with Santiago per week: 8.

In Nuevo Pudahuel they highlight that “in October 2019, 450 regular flights were operated on a daily average, while in 2020 only 100”, and they add that, in addition to the destinations specified above, “they have been canceled, without a return date, direct routes to Melbourne, Auckland, Salvador de Bahia, Mendoza, Brasilia, Cuzco, Arequipa, Trujillo, Cali, Porto Alegre, Dallas, Atlanta, Houston, Córdoba, Punta Cana, Cancun, Recife, Tel Aviv, Papeete, Iguazú, Rosario and Mexico City ”.

Airlines that left, those that are in limbo and possible return dates Important actors in the airline industry have definitively cut operations to different countries, including Chile. In this way, Emirates (it had three direct flights with Asia), Qantas (it flew four weekly frequencies between Santiago and Sydney) and Alitalia (it had five weekly connections with Rome) left our country. Anyway, the European line was evaluating a cut in its international operations before the virus broke out. In Nuevo Pudahuel they regret the loss of Emirates -which continues to fly around three weekly freight frequencies-, given that through this firm they had connectivity plans with China, Singapore, South Korea and Japan.

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However, some airlines already have dates of return to their operations in the Chilean capital on file, although always bearing in mind that the plans could change depending on the demand and the sanitary measures of each country regarding the virus.

The United Airlines station manager in Santiago, Yndhira Shilleh, reports that although their seven weekly passenger flights were paralyzed, in May they resumed cargo flights, with three weekly frequencies that connect with Houston. “We are going to reactivate passenger flights in November with three weekly frequencies, that is the idea and planning, although obviously that could change,” he admits. From Delta Air Lines, an operator that suspended its daily service between Atlanta and Santiago on 25 Last March, they respond that they plan to resume this route on December 18. In principle, they estimate four weekly frequencies and a daily service is projected from January 2021.

A similar case awaits in Aeromexico. Industry sources reveal that the Aztec carrier would resume flights between Santiago and the Mexican capital in December, although not with its daily pre-Covid service, but with fewer frequencies. The Brazilian GOL is already thinking about 2021. His station manager in Chile, Sergio Olavarría, anticipates that “we hope to return in March, because at this moment we are focused on the domestic operation in Brazil. We have all international routes suspended. We are monitoring how the pandemic evolves and how governments plan to open each of their airports and their protocols ”. GOL had 18 weekly flights in the summers, while in the regular season, between 12 and 14.

At Level airline, a low-cost subsidiary of IAG, a group that controls British Airways and Iberia, they hope to resume their operations in the Chilean capital – which connected to Barcelona with four weekly frequencies – but without a tentative date. Of course, they respond that “the intention of the company is to resume regular operations to all its destinations as soon as possible.”

A historical player in international operations in Santiago is Air France-KLM, which continues to operate flights to Europe. The firm’s manager of the Santiago airport, Francisco Benavides, acknowledges that “a couple of months ago we had a more positive view of the pandemic and we thought we could operate more Santiago-Paris flights, maybe four a week. But with borders closed for foreigners and uncertainty for passengers in Europe regarding quarantines, traffic dropped a lot and having four or five weekly frequencies was not justified. Our optimism has been diminished by reality and in Santiago we have two weekly flights to Paris with Air France and two more to Amsterdam with KLM, which go direct and nonstop in Buenos Aires ”.

Meanwhile, airlines such as Qantas and British Airways did not respond if they plan to resume their operations in Chile or not. When analyzing the movements of the operations of the different airlines in our country, Paolo Escorza, manager of EY Parthenon Chile, remarks that “The general trend we are seeing is that companies are redefining their previous investment plans in Chile, resulting in the suspension of any previous initiatives and the reduction of their overall operational footprint.”

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