Direct flights to South America's economic capital return

New sign of economic and communications recovery through El Prat: starting next November 4, Latam Airlines recovers the direct route to Barcelona from Guarulhos, its hub in São Paulo, Brazil. During the first month, three weekly frequencies will be operated, and an extra one will be added in December. Afterwards, depending on demand, Latam plans to continue increasing flights and also reopen the line with Lima, Peru, another of the destinations it had in Barcelona until early 2020.

"We have observed a constant growth in the interest of Europeans and Brazilians to resume international travel, mainly between countries open to those who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19. That is why we are constantly evaluating the possibility of resuming or expanding our operations from the European markets where we operate," comments Thibaud Morand, Latam's general director for Europe. On the continent, flights to Lisbon, Madrid, Paris, and Frankfurt have already been recovered for a few weeks. In November, it will be Barcelona's turn, and in December, Milan-Malpensa will be the sixth European destination to be resumed.

Barcelona-Brazil

Latam started its flights between São Paulo and Barcelona in 2015. It was good news for two reasons: a new intercontinental company was betting on operating from El Prat and doing so in direct competition with Singapore Airlines, which at the time also flew from Barcelona to Brazil as an extension of its long flight from Singapore. Both airlines offered their flights to Guarulhos with differentiated concepts: the Asian company flew with planes configured with three classes and excellent service, while the South American one did so with two and a different concept of onboard service that has improved over time. On the other hand, being the main local airline in Brazil, it allowed for a greater possibility of connections at the São Paulo hub to a good number of destinations in the country and other territories of that continent.

Starting next November 4, Latam Airlines recovers the direct route to Barcelona from Guarulhos. During the first month, three weekly frequencies will be operated, and an extra one will be added in December

Anecdotally, it is also worth remembering that when Singapore Airlines launched its direct route between Catalonia and Brazil, Iberia had an immediate reaction to this flight, scheduling an unprecedented Barcelona-São Paulo and also a Barcelona-Miami, as a gesture to the market with origin and destination El Prat, a destination where Iberia had retreated to leave the air shuttle to Madrid as the only service operated by itself and ceding the rest of the production to its subsidiary Vueling. After a few months, Iberia backed down on the decision to return to Barcelona operating intercontinental flights: São Paulo once again became unique territory for Singapore and the line to Miami was ceded to American Airlines, which since then operated daily with very good occupancy rates.

Latam Airlines Group

Returning to the company that is resuming its flights to Barcelona starting next November, Latam is a multinational air transport group created from the merger of two of the continent's main operators: the Chilean LAN and the Brazilian TAM.

The former has its origin in one of the oldest companies on the continent, the Santiago-Arica airmail service, a company founded in 1929 by Arturo Merino Benítez (hence the name of Santiago de Chile airport) which three years later ended up becoming the country's national airline with the acronym LAN and the commercial name LAN Chile, being a state or public company until the 1980s, when the military junta led by dictator Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte decided to privatize a good number of state assets, including the national airline, well positioned on the continent.

In the mid-90s, a 45-year-old businessman, Miguel Juan Sebastián Piñera Echenique, became the main individual shareholder of the airline after buying 16% and then increasing his stake to 26%, becoming president of the company and creating subsidiaries in Peru, Ecuador, and Argentina, companies that were named LAN, followed by the corresponding country, becoming one of the most powerful players in the sector in South America. In 2009, his last year as president of the airline group, he was fined by the Superintendence of Securities and Insurance of Chile for having taken advantage of privileged information for the purchase of a new package of company shares years earlier. A few months after the fine, Piñera was appointed president of the Republic of Chile for the 2010-2014 term and returned to office in March 2018 to lead the country again until spring 2022.

The Brazilian leg of Latam

TAM Linhas Aéreas is the Brazilian part of the holding. It does not have as long a history as LAN Chile, although it is also a veteran of the sector: it was born in 1961 as a small air transport company with single-engine planes. In fact, the acronym TAM stands for Taxi Aéreo Marilia and the big economic boost came when Orlando Chesini Ometto, a sugar and alcohol magnate, became the largest shareholder of the company and made it grow in a very competitive market where the traditional Varig and Vasp dominated the sector, although today they are history.

The closure of the two major Brazilian companies was a great opportunity for TAM, which grew exponentially and, in addition to flying throughout the continent, acquired several classic routes to Europe, until in 2008 it joined its destiny with LAN, creating the multinational Latam, in a formula very similar to that of the Franco-Dutch Air France-KLM in Europe, a single company with two large heads or operational centers in the main countries of origin, in addition to a series of regional or specialized subsidiaries, such as the cargo divisions.

If there are no setbacks and everything continues as planned, in a few weeks, a piece of this history returns to Barcelona and El Prat will once again be on the map of destinations of the largest Latin American airline group with some 138 passenger destinations in 25 countries and cargo services in nearly 140 airports in 29 countries, with a fleet of more than 300 aircraft and having Delta Airlines and Qatar Airways as reference shareholders.

Like the rest of the sector, Latam has experienced the worst moments of its journey in the 2020-2021 period and is now beginning to recover. Proof of this is the recovery of its destinations in Europe.