Flag of Argentinasvg
A decade seems to have passed, but the Milei administration started its tenure ten months ago. With ramping inflation, a steep peso devaluation, and several social challenges ahead, almost all our answers when we aviation analysts were asked about the local industry’s future and what the new government would do in the short term concluded with the same word: “nothing.”
There were—and still are—so many issues to address in the big picture that we thought the new administration’s focus and energy should be directed anywhere but in the commercial aviation industry. Just days before the general election’s second round, the three leading carriers got together at Aeroparque to send a signal: a detente in a cold war that, often despite their best efforts, derived in a bitter but kind-of-respectful convivence.
The analysis would stand, but we committed a fatal flaw: we thought about the local industry as we would analyze it in any country, but the land of Messi and Maradona will never cease to surprise. But we have lived many lives in this beautiful, messy, fascinating, self-destructing country to have one certainty: expect the unexpected, and you will be right.
A question of time
Last April, the FAA audited Argentina, and, to no shock, the situation was dire: the agency returned the IASA procedure with 82 findings. It’s not that the findings were unexpected, but the main issue is time. A few months later, the ANAC -National Civil Aviation Administration- intervened, and its former director was ousted based on the consensus that he was “not proactive enough” to address the findings. A smaller consensus was formed around “ineptitude,” so there you have it.
Views: 2
