MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Latam rescheduling and scaling back domestic and international flights

The Chilean carrier will be axing seven domestic routes within Chile, which are mostly intra-provincial routes

South American carrier LATAM has suspended ticket sales on 23 routes across its network, including several domestic routes within Chile and international routes from Brazil, Chile and Peru. At the same time, the Santiago-headquartered carrier has made the bold move to suspend international destinations from five Argentinean destinations to the carrier’s hubs in Santiago, Lima and Sao Paulo until 2021.

This is part of the carrier’s restructuring process the airline submitted as part of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection that seeks to make the carrier more efficient in what is likely to be a smaller post-COVID-19 market.

The South American carrier will be axing seven domestic routes within Chile, which are mostly intra-provincial routes including Concepcion – Punta Arenas, Antofagasta – La Serena and Santiago – Castro. Internationally, the airline will be discontinuing flights from its base in Santiago to 12 international destinations including Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro, Cusco, Punta Cana and Melbourne.

Also, from Chile, LATAM will no longer fly from the northern city of Iquique to La Paz and from Easter Island to Papeete, a route which originated in Santiago using a Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Instead, the airline will discontinue the South Pacific crossing from Easter Island. This was first reported by Chilean outlet Aero-Naves

LATAM is also making a significant scale back on international routes from Argentina. In the past, the airline had built a structure that connected five provincial cities of Cordoba, Mendoza, San Miguel de Tucuman, Salta and Rosario with some of the carrier’s hubs in Santiago, Lima and Sao Paulo, enabling passengers to connect to onward destinations throughout the Americas, Europe, South Africa and Oceania. This move also affects flights from the capital city of Buenos Aires to Brazilian cities of Recife, Salvador and Rio de Janeiro, all popular holiday destinations for South American travelers.

The airline is suspending these routes until 2021 and in the meantime will only operate flights from Buenos Aires to the carrier’s hubs in Santiago, Lima and Sao Paulo. With LATAM closing its Argentine subsidiary last week, this leaves several Argentine cities out of the airline span of operations until next year.

In this way, airlines expect a slower resumption of travel to and from and within the region. Argentina has closed its borders until September and Peru until October. Meanwhile, Chile is maintaining limited domestic and international connectivity. However, the borders remain shut for non-residents.