Chile Strengthens Connectivity With Oceania and Europe
Seventeen airlines operate in Santiago de Chile’s Arturo Merino Benítez Airport, with a network of 36 international destinations.
By December 2022, more than 18 million passengers are projected to transit through Santiago Airport. Although these figures are better than in 2020 and 2021, they are still below the nearly 25 million people who traveled in 2019, before the pandemic.
On October 30, flight QF27 landed from Sydney, operated by Australian airline Qantas. The arrival of the Boeing 787 aircraft, with its characteristic red tail and a kangaroo, marked a new milestone for the reactivation of routes to and from Santiago’s International Airport.
This nonstop flight, which connected the capitals of Chile and Australia, was suspended in March 2020 due to the pandemic. After almost 32 months, Qantas returned to Santiago Airport with four flights a week from Sydney.
“The return of Qantas airline will boost connectivity between Chile and Oceania, but also with Asia. By returning to this route, competition increases, and Santiago’s Airport resumes its role as a strategic point of connection between Australia and the rest of South America,” said François-Regis Le Miere, General Manager of Nuevo Pudahuel, operator of Santiago Airport.
Chile’s Undersecretary of Tourism Veronica Kunze added: “We are delighted that Qantas is returning to link Santiago with Sydney, which will allow us to reach different places in the world and attract foreign tourists to come to our country.”
Qantas was one of many foreign airlines that decided to return to Chile this long weekend. On Monday, October 31, at night, a flight operated by LEVEL, a Spanish low-cost airline, which suspended its operations due to the pandemic, also arrived directly from Barcelona. It is the only one that makes flights at lower prices between Chile and Europe.
This airline joins five others that already operate services to Europe from Santiago Airport and will diversify the offer to Spain since LEVEL is the only one that flies direct to Barcelona. This route will be operated by an Airbus A330-200 aircraft with up to four weekly frequencies.
“That Barcelona is once again connected to Santiago de Chile directly is great news. The two cities share social and business links, and that is why, at LEVEL, we wanted to reunite both destinations. And we do it being the only airline that connects Barcelona with the Chilean capital. In addition to the possible synergies that this connectivity can generate, we are also offering our customers a desirable destination such as Santiago de Chile, with the possibility of living there the austral summer”, said Lucía Adrover, commercial director of LEVEL.
François-Regis Le Miere emphasized that “we will continue working so that the airlines that left us due to the pandemic return, but we are also focused on attracting new companies and opening more routes that connect Chile with the world. The return of LEVEL and Qantas to Santiago Airport will provide passengers with more diverse and competitive options to connect Chile, Europe, and Oceania.
Such activity recovery will be reinforced in December with new routes operated by various companies: SKY will open a direct flight to Bariloche. That same month, JetSmart will fly for the first time to Rio de Janeiro, and in January 2023, Avianca will add a direct service from Santiago to Cartagena de Indias.