Avianca holds great responsibility for what happened to Viva Air: expert
On Monday night, February 27, Viva Air issued a statement announcing “the suspension of its operations with immediate effect”. The decision was made following the decision of the Civil Aeronautics (Aerocivil) to recognize “the intervention of interested third parties in the Avianca-Viva integration process”.
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Since then, the airline’s planes have remained landed, and hundreds of flights have been cancelled. As if this were not enough, the company’s president, Francisco Lalinde, assured that the company has a very tight cash flow and that the priority will be to liquidate its 1,200 workers. With this, he opened the door to the possibility that the company will not respond to the users who bought tickets and will not be able to travel.
In view of the sudden suspension of activities by the airline Viva Air, Manuel Guillermo Sarmiento, director of the Department of Transportation Law and Transportation Infrastructure of the Universidad Externado de Colombia and member of the Latin American Association of Aeronautic and Space Law (ALADA), gave Más Colombia his assessment of the facts and highlighted the role that the national government is called to play in the construction of an open skies policy.
This is what he told us:
The chaos generated as a result of the suspension of operations by Viva Air has several interpretations. In the first place, it is unacceptable that an airline out of nowhere decides to suspend its flights without protecting passengers and with the aggravating circumstance of selling tickets hours before the operation was suspended.
Behind this suspension of operations is also the company Avianca, which has a great responsibility. It is no secret that Avianca today holds the majority of the shares of Viva Air and that there is already a de facto integration. Obviously, the authorization from the aeronautical authority was missing.
Here we also find a series of major contradictions as in November the aeronautical authority had pronounced that it did not accept the integration of the two companies, because it implied a monopoly in the service provided in the sense that Avianca would assume a dominant position in the market.
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Later on, upon receiving the appeal for reconsideration that had been filed against that decision, the Aerocivil took a totally surprising and, in my opinion illegal, measure of declaring the nullity of the process arguing procedural reasons, when it is very clear that the aeronautical authority -in the development of its competence- had made a decision in my opinion totally grounded from the technical, financial and competition point of view.
So, here we have a very delicate situation that is affecting thousands of air transport users.
In view of the situation, the government must take radical measures. On the one hand, the Superintendence must immediately initiate investigations into this unacceptable decision of Viva Air to suspend operations without warning. On the other hand, I think this is an opportunity for the government and the Colombian aeronautical authority to evaluate a national open skies policy.
What does this mean? That recognized foreign companies, both European and American, may come here to provide domestic air transportation services to prevent a company such as Avianca, which has been totally protected by all governments throughout the history of Colombian civil aviation, from concentrating the market.
This monopolistic situation must end with a true open skies policy, which would be a solution to the problems that are currently arising with these decisions, which I repeat are unacceptable, and with the undue pressure that Avianca has put on the government to accept its integration.
