On Monday night, February 27, Viva Air issued a statement announcing \u201cthe suspension of its operations with immediate effect\u201d. The decision was made following the decision of the Civil Aeronautics (Aerocivil) to recognize \u201cthe intervention of interested third parties in the Avianca-Viva integration process\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Since then, the airline\u2019s planes have remained landed, and hundreds of flights have been cancelled. As if this were not enough, the company\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 M\u00e1s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is what he told us:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Behind this suspension of operations is also the company Avianca, which has a great responsibility.<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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