In addition, experts report that the flow of passengers on Copa flights to and from Argentina, represents less than 10% of the tickets. The rest are passengers who only take to Panama as a connection to continue their journey to the United States and also to destinations in Europe, given that Copa has its regional and international hub at Tocumen Airport in Panama City.
Therefore, it would not be profitable for Aerolíneas Argentinas to operate direct flights to Panama due to the low flow of passengers.
Experts warn that a similar situation occurs with the agreement signed with Canada. Flights between that country and Argentina are carried out exclusively by Air Canada. Any release of flight restrictions will be capitalized only by the Canadian company.
In the absence of Aerolíneas Argentinas flights to that North American destination, Air Canada has a flight that stops in Sao Paulo and heads to the cities of Montreal or Toronto, depending on the case. It has up to five weekly flights in the low season and adds one more in the high season.
Anyway, the agreement with Panama has an additional feature. And that is Copa Airlines is increasing its frequencies towards Argentina for quite some time now, taking advantage of every window of opportunity that the regulations in force until now allowed.
Copa currently flies from Panama to Buenos Aires, Mendoza, Rosario and Cordoba. And it was recently reported that will add a fifth flight between Tocumen and Ezeiza from the first days of August. It also had a flight to Salta at one time, but it was discontinued, although It is estimated that it will resume soon.
The competing views on the liberation of flights
“With the liberalization of the air sector between Argentina and Panama, connectivity can be increased, expand operational capacities, generate unlimited frequency conditions and add new destinations by eliminating current restrictions,” the Ministry of Transportation said in a statement.
The act will specifically allow us to move from a system of restricted frequencies to an unlimited frequency systemin which each airline will have the freedom to determine the number of frequencies according to the market forecast and its characteristics at any given time.
On the other hand, it goes from a restricted route table in which flying from previous points was not allowed and the use of intermediate and subsequent destinations was limited, to a broader route table in which It is allowed to fly without starting or ending in the country itself.
The accelerated opening of the Argentine skies that the Javier Milei government is developing raises questions among all the aeronautical unions, which reject the opening measures because they understand that “they promote the loss of sovereignty” airline and harm the operations of Aerolíneas Argentinas for the benefit of foreign companies.
However, the alleged beneficiaries in Argentina They would not be completely satisfied either. with the situation that arises with these agreements. They do not question the liberation of the heavens, but they maintain that macroeconomic conditions are not given so that they can take advantage of reciprocity and plan their expansion to countries with signed agreements.
This is because the Argentine Government still maintains a series of restrictions, especially exchangewhich harm the operations of companies low cost, since they cannot negotiate freely with their international aircraft suppliers or other providers of products and services because they do not have the dollars available to pay.
This limits their operating capacity, since they cannot add aircraft to their fleets or forces them to negotiate abroad under conditions lower than those that companies from other countries can offer in normal situations in their payment policy.
Therefore, they maintain that it is unthinkable to plan any regional expansion strategy to enter neighboring markets in a position to compete with airlines from nations under open skies agreements.
