Crisis at Viva Air: Francisco Lalinde, president of the airline, speaks – Business – Economy

The company live air announced, this Monday, the suspension of all its operations. This decision was made after the ‘low cost’ airline presented a serious financial crisis.

The news of the suspension in its operations caused a commotion in several airports in Colombia, where people demonstrated against the decision and spent the night in the air terminals waiting for a solution from the airline.

(Read: Avianca announced that it temporarily suspends the sale of tickets)

Francisco Lalinde, president of live airspoke this Tuesday in the program Question Yamid about the crisis facing the airline and the solutions that are proposed.

(Keep reading: Did you have a Viva Air ticket? So you can reschedule your flight with another airline.)

Lalinde He mentioned that after seven months of waiting, Civil Aeronautics has not been able to respond to the crisis that the airline has been experiencing and its possible integration with Avianca

“What is happening today is the result of waiting for seven months of approval of an integration process that to date has not been able to be resolved by the Colombian aeronautical authorities, an integration process that has had multiple setbacks,” he pointed out.

The manager pointed out that the integration process with Avianca was rejected in November 2022 and in January 2023 he recognized that “the law that he used for the integration analysis was the wrong law and therefore he had to annul the first ruling “.

(Keep reading: Viva Air: What options do you have if you were affected by the suspension of flights?).

He added that the company has a high level of employability and that this crisis forced them to study whether there was cash flow to pay their work teams.

“The cash flows and see if we have the capacity to wait for a decision from the Civil Aeronautics and with the arguments they presented yesterday, we do not see a decision in the next two months,” he said.

Lalinde mentioned that the financial crisis and the company’s cash flows “does not have the financial strength to wait two months. This forced us to suspend our operations to give priority to responding to the obligations we have with our employees.”

(In addition: Latam, Avianca and Satena offer flights to Viva Air passengers).

Ticket sales in the midst of the crisis

On ticket sales in the midst of the crisisLalinde said: “We began looking for the Civil Aeronautics from Thursday and Friday to explain the crisis the company is experiencing.”

“We spoke with high-level people in the Government, we told them that we had until 5 in the afternoon on Monday for Aerocivil to manifest itself in some communication to indicate what were the decisions that were going to be made in Aerocivil regarding the process integration,” he added. And he added: “We had no support to continue operating.”

We had no support to continue operating

The president of live air He pointed out that Civil Aeronautics has not wanted to communicate with the airline: “Every month and a half we have given Aerocivil how the flow of the company has been deteriorating and we have not received a response.” In fact, he held that entity responsible for the closure of the company.

Lalinde stated that the only way out for Viva is the integration with Avianca and that “they are not blackmailing the Government.”

Is it a blackmail to the Government and the Aerocivil?

Lalinde said that the closing of the operation is not blackmail to authorize the integration between Viva and Avianca. He mentioned that he has documents that demonstrate the financial crisis situation of the airline.

“Given the silence of Aerocivil and not knowing what the future was with this decision, we had to give priority to all our collaborators. Viva is starting a process for the departure of more than 400 employees from its staff, this is not a process of blackmail before a government, ”he assured.

He emphasized that it is not a process of blackmail, but of how to save a company, to see if in the future they are able to engage in the market again.

‘The only option is integration with Avianca’

Lalinde stated that Viva it used all its resources to face the financial crisis and suffered the devaluation of the peso.

“We had sales records in Colombian pesos, but when we converted them into dollars we couldn’t generate the amount of dollars the company needed. It is not blackmail, it is a real company position,” said Lalinde, who argued that they were waiting for a yes or no to advance in the integration process with Avianca.

The president of the company said that there has been a lot of talk about selling to other companies, but these processes take time and Viva’s box was not enough to survive for more than a few days. “The only real option for Viva is integration with Avianca,” Lalinde said.

What will happen to those affected?

“We have to be realistic. Right now I have to give priority to the commitments I have with Viva’s collaborators,” said Lalinde, who emphasized that the situation is critical.

And he added: “Viva has made a great effort for seven months, attending to the crisis with total quality. If Viva receives an authorization to continue, we will have to start a trust recovery process with the users”.

On the contrary, if he does not receive that authorization, he said that “the fate of the airline is sealed, in a liquidation process.”

On the afternoon of this Tuesday, several airlines offered their planes to transport people who were in the air terminals, among them: Avianca, Latam and Wingo.

More news:

Latam increases operations in the country to counteract the Viva Air crisis

Viva Air: this is how you can change your flight to another airline; Avianca suspends sales

Did you have a flight abroad with Viva? These are the options of other airlines

Pamela Avendano
LATEST NEWS EDITORIAL