By Lenys Vargas.
The airline Air France suspended its operations in Venezuela for at least two years, since it is not profitable to maintain the route.
A close source, who preferred to remain anonymous, confirmed to El Pitazo that for the time, the company concentrates on other routes. France does not recognize Nicolas Maduro as a legitimate Venezuelan leader, instead sided with National Assembly President Juan Guaido.
Although Air France has not made its decision official, it has already met with the staff and notified the National Institute of Civil Aviation (Inac ins Spanish) and the Simon Bolivar International Airport in Maiquetia.
Gone are the golden days, when oil-rich, the Saudi Venezuela, was one of the few countries in the world to get regular service by the state-of-the-art Concorde jet in the 1970s, connecting Paris and Caracas in only six hours, as the old advert went.
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Even before the COVID-19 pandemic declared in Venezuela in mid-March, users who tried to buy Air France tickets to and from Venezuela reported got diverted to the Panama website of the airlines.
When you enter the information map to know in which countries the airline operates, the result is that in Venezuela, there is no headquarters.
On September 5, the French Embassy in Venezuela informed that the Air France flight that got scheduled to cover the route from Paris to Caracas on Sunday, September 6, would not take place because it did not receive the authorization of the Nicolas Maduro government.
However, the flight got made on September 18, as notified by the French diplomatic headquarters in Caracas and detailed that 108 passengers returned to Venezuela, among them French and European citizens residing in the country, as well as Venezuelans stranded in France and Europe.
In said flight, the French Ambassador in Venezuela, Romain Nadal, also arrived, who at the time manifested through his account on Instagram that he was happy to have returned to “our beautiful Caracas.”
