The government authorized the Chilean airline Sky Airline to operate two new destinations, between Bariloche and the Chilean city of Puerto Montt south of both countries, as well as the route that will connect Santiago de Chile With Buenos Aires and from there to the Brazilian city of Salvador de Bahia. The authorization is both for passenger and load transport and both routes will begin operating at the end of March 2025.
Also, on Tuesday the Undersecretariat of Air Transport authorized a route of the Paraguayan airline Paranair between Asunción and Salta, which had been operating since February 11 with the provisional authorization based on flight programming. Now, with the publication of disposition 9 of the Undersecretariat, that route was firm.
In the case of Sky, it is the first direct connection between Bariloche and Puerto Montt, cities that are at a similar latitude in the southern area of the two countries.
As for the route between Santiago de Chile, Buenos Aires and San Salvador de Bahía, it is a modality that involves “freedoms of air” that are beginning to be applied from the bilateral agreement that Argentina and Chile signed in April of the year past. It is an agreement of unlimited flight frequencies and enabling the ninth freedom of air, which allows airlines of the other country to make cabotage flights.
So far, that “ninth” liberated It was not applied by any of the airlinesbut official sources had consigned Sky’s interest in “exploring” that alternative. The family company Paulmann Company already connects Buenos Aires (Aeroparque and Ezeiza), El Calafate, Mendoza and Bariloche – San Pablo, with Santiago de Chile.
As for Paranair, controlled by the Spanish-Canadian group Avmax-Air ushe also expressed interest in making at least one scale in the cabotage of Argentina on one of the routes that connects from Paraguay. Its manager, Jaime Cassola, told Clarín last year that for 2025 they will incorporate a fourth plane, which would allow them to increase their frequencies towards Argentina. Among those hypothetical routes, a corridor was between Asunción, Jujuy and Mendozaas well as between Asunción, Córdoba and Mendoza.