MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Lan privileged passengers but will review investments and expects ‘common sense’ from Argentine officials

“We had to yield to the petitions of the company in favour of our passengers” said Enrique Elcasa, Lan General Manager

Lan Chile admitted the company had to yield to the demands from the Argentine company Intercargo, which monopolizes ground services in all the country’s air terminals, so that they could resume normal traffic in Argentina. It also said that it was not leaving Argentine but would review future investments and expects more common sense from local authorities.

“We had to yield to the petitions of the company in favour of our passengers”, said Lan Chile Enrique Elcasa in Santiago on Sunday morning. “We had 5.000 pax many of them who wanted to return to their countries, other wanted a weekend to rest, and from the moment we yielded, flights were back in the air”.

“The situation we face with the Argentine company is extremely serious. We hade a contract and court decisions, and despite all the company ignored those orders, the contract and unilaterally cut the ground services which impeded us from operating”, added the Chilean manager of the Chilean-Brazilian Latam consortium.

Lan Chile reinforced on Saturday and Sunday services to Buenos Aires, Mendoza and Cordoba to fly the stranded passengers.

Likewise Vice-president Ignacio Cueto said that Lan will continue with operations in Argentina despite the week-long conflict with Intercargo, “however we are going to review our future investments”.

Cueto who also belongs to one of the families that have a control over Lan Chile said that “we were expecting a little bit more of common sense” from Argentine authorities since “they can’t have an air industry with the most expensive airport in the world and adopt attitudes that don’t allow us to operate normally and to a great extent are benefiting Aerolineas Argentinas”.

“Competition must be in the market, in services, in the aircraft; but this kind of incidents is not going to scare us from a country, the conflict was with Intercargo”.

Cueto revealed that the company has had contacts with President Cristina Fernandez and before her with president Nestor Kirchner and “they have always received their support and interest in having Lan Argentina and flying”.

However there are certain Argentine political groups that also manage Aerolíneas Argentinas that don’t agree with us operating in the country.

Finally Cueto said that even when it is true that these companies (Intercargo and Aerolineas Argentinas) belong to the government and depend from the Executive, we have not detected any participation of the Executive in this incident and hopefully officials will be cautious so that we can have good air services in Argentina”.

The Buenos Aires media revealed that allegedly 75% of Intercargo revenue comes from Lan, and because of this they had signed a special agreement with their top client. Lan was paying 32.4 million dollars annually for Intercargo services and has now accepted to pay an additional 18 million dollars.