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| Caribbean-Latin America | |
| Peru Grounds Top Airline | |
| 2004-07-13 | |
| Peru grounded the nation's largest airline, citing the carrier's inability to find an insurance policy after it landed on a U.S. government blacklist for suspected drug traffickers. The Transportation Ministry said in a statement Monday that it had suspended the operations of Aero Continente, adding that a contingency plan would be started to allow other airlines to take over its flight routes. Aero Continente handled between 60 percent and 70 percent of Peru's domestic aviation market. The decision came amid Peru's peak tourist season and the Copa America soccer tournament being held in several Peruvian cities. The airline's insurance policy expired on Saturday. That same day an emergency presidential decree, published in Peru's official gazette El Peruano, said the Finance Ministry would act as a financial guarantor for Aero Continente for "a period not to exceed 30 days." But the Transportation Ministry said Monday that the government and the airline had been unable to find a replacement insurer. The world's largest airline insurer, Global Aerospace, pulled its contract with Aero Continente after the U.S. government blacklisted the airline on June 1. The American blacklisting prohibits U.S. citizens or companies from conducting business with Aero Continente, its top executives or its subsidiary companies. Global Aerospace is partially owned by U.S. interests. It is illegal under Peruvian law and international regulations for airlines to fly without insurance policies that cover the planes and the passengers and cargo they carry. Aero Continente founder Fernando Zevallos, 47, has been the subject of numerous U.S. drug probes, but has never been convicted of a crime and denies any wrongdoing. He is now on trial in Peru on drug trafficking and money laundering charges. Aero Continente lost permission to enter U.S. air space in April after failing a safety inspection by the Federal Aviation Administration. After the blacklisting, the airline dropped its international flights that included a daily route to Miami. Aero Continente's fleet of some two dozen planes served 15 Peruvian destinations with about 30 domestic flights.
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| Posted by:Steve White |
| #3 When I was backpacking around Peru, Damn I wish I could throw a phrase like that out. All I got is: When I was limping near Macon or, I remember Bainbridge in November or, They don't make towns like Perry anymore or, Sure, they remember me in Dothan. :) |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-07-13 12:44:07 PM |
| #2 Relative to its modest wealth and power, Peru is one of the most aviation concious countries in the world. This has to do with geography. The country is quite large and is split by the Andean cordillera. As far as surface transport is concerned, the Amazon river port of Iquitos could almost be on a different planet from the capital, Lima, which lies on the other side of the mountains. In the early 1930s, a border conflict broke out with neighboring Ecuador on the Amazon side. It was easier for the Peruvian government to send reinforcements by sea; via the Panama Canal, the Caribbean, and the Brazilian Amazon (a distance of 6000 miles); than it was to send them a few hundred miles over the mountains. The arrival of practical transport planes a few years later changed all that. John Gunther's Inside Latin America, written in the summer of 1941, places great emphasis on aviation resources in that part of the world and the altogether suspicious fact that German interests had become heavily involved in developing air routes in Latin America during the 30s. The US devoted quite a bit of diplomatic effort to changing this situation in the years immediately before World War 2, and the German companies were seized or shut down in 1941-42. I've flown quite a bit in Peru and share the following observations: Not everyone is engaged in drug-smuggling or gun-running. Even back-water communities have regular air service. Equipment varies from ancient DC-3s to Boeing 777s. Cessnas abound, while the products of the rival Piper and Beech organizations are fairly rare. Air traffic controllers are highly skilled but nav-aids are haphazard at best and a threat to life and limb at worst. The terrain is downright scary and many an overconfident yanqui visitor has ended up as a permanent addition to some 18000 foot mountainside. Peru has some of the best mechanics in the world. People really do fly with chickens and goats in the cabin, though not on jets. The Latin American Aviation Historical Society has some good material on Peru. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2004-07-13 6:16:26 AM |
| #1 When I was backpacking around Peru, it was widely rumored that Aero Continente got its seed capital from the cocaine trade. |
| Posted by: 11A5S 2004-07-13 1:02:19 AM |