A plane of the Colombian airline Ultra Air.Eduardo Sanchez (RR SS)
As a déjà vu of the Viva Air crisis, another Colombian low-cost airline, Ultra Air, canceled several of its flights this Thursday. In addition, airline ticket sales were suspended “for now” until April 30, and the Superintendency of Transportation took action to prevent the economic woes affecting this company from affecting its customers and suppliers.
The state body responsible for overseeing carriers said in a statement that it enacted the measures “because the airline has low levels of liquidity, making it difficult to make short-term commitments and creating a risk of default among its creditors.” “. Supertransporte asked Ultra to present how it will continue to work, with a schedule of its commercial flights by day and route, with data on the aircraft and crew of each trip, and clarifying how it will guarantee passengers with tickets already purchased fly in case it has to shut down its operations.
In turn, Civil Aeronautics, another government agency responsible for operating the aviation market, said in a statement that “it determined that Ultra Air continues to fly, with a partial reduction in its capacity for technical reasons.” He stated that he maintains “priority monitoring of the situation caused by the impact that may have occurred in the last few hours resulting from the operations of Ultra Air”. At the time, the company’s president, William Shaw, told the newspaper El Colombiano that while the company’s financials were in a bad financial position with more liabilities than assets, “they aren’t very different from those of many airlines around the world last year.” And he argued that they were hit by a blow from the Viva crisis: “Viva’s situation has put us under a lot of pressure from the current suppliers, they are nervous, many of them require us to prepay for fuel, prepay for services and other” .
The low-cost airline, which has operated routes between 10 Colombian cities in just one year of operation and has an 8% share of the Colombian market, has been facing economic difficulties for several weeks. 10 days ago, in the wake of the Viva Air crisis, broadcaster W Radio announced that Ultra was on the verge of ceasing operations. The airline issued a statement denying the information. “Ultra Air is backed by solid investors who believe in the company’s project and are aware of the current challenges in the industry,” he said.
Ultra’s troubles are part of a series of broader movements in the aviation sector in Colombia. This Wednesday it became known that the possibility of the Chilean airline JetSmart, the third largest in this country, which is in the process of merging with American Airlines, to buy Ultra has failed. In a document, he explained that after analyzing the details of the operation, he “withdrew his intention to buy Ultra Air.” That decision came on the same day that Aerocivil approved the merger between Avianca and another low-cost airline, Viva Air. Utra rejected this integration and in October Avianca criminally convicted her of procedural fraud and accused her of using false information to oppose her integration with low-cost carrier Viva Air. Ultra Air – or rather its representatives – argued before Aerocivil that these two airlines were already operating together, setting routes and fares irregularly.
JetSmart, which also expressed interest in buying Viva Air in February, currently only operates flights from Bogotá and Medellín to Santiago de Chile and from Cali to Santiago and Antofagasta. But in early March, Aerocivil began the process of approving operations on 27 national routes in Colombia.
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