Brent Pin­heiro

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

Days af­ter Venezuela is­sued an ul­ti­ma­tum to in­ter­na­tion­al air­lines re­quir­ing them to re­sume ser­vice or lose the right to fly, the coun­try has fol­lowed through with that threat. In a late-night so­cial me­dia post, the In­sti­tu­to Na­cional de Aeronáu­ti­ca Civ­il Venezuela (IN­AC) con­firmed that con­ces­sions had been re­voked for six air­lines: Iberia, TAP Por­tu­gal, avian­ca, LATAM Colom­bia, Turk­ish Air­lines, and GOL Air­lines. Lo­cal car­ri­er Caribbean Air­lines was not named on the list. The no­tice was pub­lished in the Of­fi­cial Gazette No. 43264 of the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela.

IN­AC says rights were re­voked be­cause the air­lines joined the ac­tions of state ter­ror­ism pro­mot­ed by the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment when they sus­pend­ed flights to and from the coun­try.

This lat­est move leaves just a hand­ful of air­lines op­er­at­ing in Venezuela in­clud­ing Pana­ma-based CO­PA Air­lines. The In­ter­na­tion­al Air Trans­port As­so­ci­a­tion (IA­TA) has warned that this de­ci­sion will fur­ther re­duce con­nec­tiv­i­ty to a coun­try that is al­ready one of the least con­nect­ed in the re­gion.

Last Fri­day the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion (FAA) is­sued a No­tice to Air­men (NO­TAM) ad­vis­ing pi­lots to ex­er­cise cau­tion while op­er­at­ing in the Mai­quetía Flight In­for­ma­tion Re­gion (SVZM FIR). The NO­TAM specif­i­cal­ly warns pi­lots to ex­er­cise cau­tion at all al­ti­tudes, in­clud­ing dur­ing over­flight, as well as dur­ing the ar­rival and de­par­ture phas­es of flight. The ad­vi­so­ry says this is due to the “wors­en­ing se­cu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion and height­ened mil­i­tary ac­tiv­i­ty in or around Venezuela”.

The ad­vi­so­ry led to sev­er­al air­lines can­celling flights to/from Venezuela and sus­pend­ing op­er­a­tions cit­ing safe­ty con­cerns.