The Superintendence of Transportation has taken control of Viva Air on Monday, as reported by the Ministry of Transportation in a statement. In addition, it has requested the Superintendence of Companies to accept the airline in a business reorganization process, which would allow it to freeze past debts to seek to avoid bankruptcy. According to the Superintendency, the objective is to overcome the critical situations that Viva faces and that have directly affected users. It is estimated that 16,000 passengers have been affected every day since the cessation of operations last Tuesday.
The State will now be the one to decide if Viva will survive or go into liquidation. At the moment, the resolution of the Superintendence of Transport establishes a period of two days to present a recovery and maintenance plan. Likewise, the company must restore its administrative headquarters before Thursday and define the status of passenger reservations. The obligations contracted for the advance sale of tickets must be preserved until the current conditions are overcome.
The Government had warned about the imminence of this decision. The Minister of Transportation, Guillermo Reyes, demanded last Wednesday that the airline guarantee users the transfer to their destinations or the reimbursement of the sums they paid for the tickets. In case this does not materialize, the Executive informed that it was evaluating the intervention of the air market.
Viva Air affirms that it cannot return the money for approximately one million tickets that have not been used and that are valid until September 2024. The company points to the Civil Aeronautics as responsible for the crisis, since the entity preliminarily rejected in November the integration of Viva with Avianca. The low-cost airline claims that the operation is essential to overcome the “critical financial situation” in which it finds itself. The delays of the Civil Aeronautics in defining the case, reopened in January, are the presumed cause of the cessation of operations. “Viva did not take this drastic step as a strategy to put pressure on the Government. It was taken because our reality is that we are in a financial crisis,” read a statement last Tuesday.
The Civil Aeronautics indicated in November that both companies participate in 59 domestic routes and, if integrated, would add 100% participation in 16 of them. And he has stood firm in his position. Last Monday, he reiterated that the integration “tended to produce an undue restriction of competition” and that it had given opportunities for companies to present solutions. According to the entity, its interest is to ensure “especially” respect for the rights of users who may be affected by the integration.
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