On Saturday LATAM Airlines will permanently discontinue all flights to Venezuela due to the difficulty in repatriating profits because of the current exchange control in the country.
This was declared by an anonymous source from within the company who told la Asociación de Líneas Aéreas de Venezuela(the Association of Airlines of Venezuela) that the decision was taken because of the difficulty of repatriating profits in Venezuela.
LATAM had previously announced in May that it would suspend flights to Venezuela from Sao Paulo, Santiago and Lima due to the economic complications pertinent in the region.
Other airlines have also suspended flights to Venezuela recently including Lufthansa, Aeroméxico, Alitalia and Air Canada.
Venezuela is going through a crisis which has produced a number of problems including severe shortages of basic necessities with people having to form huge queues in order to try and buy basic items. At least 35000 Venezuelans entered into Colombia in June in order to buy medicine and food.
The problem stems from a complex monetary arrangement which utilises 4 different exchange rates at once which has been in place since 2003, although the country has alternated between single and multiple exchange rate systems.
LATAM is headquartered in Chile and has offices in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Peru. The company was the result of a merger between LAN airlines and TAM airlines and was founded in 2012.
