MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Argentina planning tourist air tours of Antarctica beginning 2018
The flights with LADE aircraft are scheduled to land in the Antarctic Marambio base Argentina plans to organize tourist air tours to Antarctica beginning 2018, with the government's airline, LADE, according to official sources from the Tourism and Defense ministries.
To promote such commercial flights the Defense ministry will mount this coming summer in the Marambio Antarctic base a medium range radar, together with other electronic systems to ensure air navigability. The project also contemplates extending the landing strip to 1.600 meters.
Once the strip at the base is fully equipped the plan is to begin in 2018 tourist flights with LADE, the Argentine Air Force airline which operates commercially in mainland Argentina.
With this purpose the Argentine government is planning to provide LADE with turbo prop aircraft. Options mentioned are the ATR-72 and the Bombardier Q-400.
Marambio, is Argentina's main scientific and research base in Antarctica, operational the whole year and managed by the Argentine Air Force.
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Read all commentsThe argies will abandon their attempted colonies on the British Antarctic territory well before 2018.
Jul 27th, 2016 - 01:42 pm 0They plan to do this yet can't resupply their base there?
Jul 27th, 2016 - 04:30 pm 0I'm sure any 'tourist' will be glad to pay a huge amount of money to arrive at a base that has little to no food, and probably insufficient fuel to heat the place.
Or are the Argentines planning on keeping this afloat by having other countries (UK and Chile) constantly bail them out?
Added to this is the fact that the Argentines wouldn't be able to offer any kind of rescue service should anything go wrong (what with the weather changing rapidly and drastically without any notice), and would therefore once again be relying on either the British or the Chileans to bail them out.
I really doubt that the Argentine government will get any insurance to cover these flights, and any passenger would no doubt be told that their own travel insurance would also not cover it either that or the premiums would be through the roof.
It'll be interesting to see if this will actually happen or whether it's another case of the Argentine government just announcing stuff that sounds good but never materialises.
Will they be offering return tickets ?
Jul 27th, 2016 - 04:48 pm 0Commenting for this story is now closed.
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