Flybondi celebrates its first anniversary: ​​hundreds of suspended flights, countless incidents and no government sanction

A year ago, the low-cost controversy Flybondi began operating from El Palomar Airport and his failed maiden flight, which lasted only 12 minutes due to a technical fault in a turbine and which caused an emergency landing, was a harbinger of what was going to happen. to follow. This episode was the beginning of an endless saga of incidents involving the company linked to national government officials. During, He did not receive a single sanction.

Since the first failed flight on January 23, 2018, the airline has had a myriad of incidents, including several episodes that have not resulted in a miracle tragedy.. Perhaps The most dangerous is the one that occurred on July 16 when a plane crashed on the runway of Iguazú Airport while it was trying to take off. .

The high rate of incidents was admitted by the Flybondi himself in a document he presented to the ANAC (National Civil Aviation Administration)., by Tomás Insausti, appointed by the Minister of Transport, Guillermo Dietrich. In this document The low cost acknowledged having made a total of 853 incidents on flights made between February 15 and August 5, 2018.

Paper presented to ANAC.

However, Qualified sources in the aerospace industry say that to date, they estimate that it has already exceeded one thousand operations with failures and problems of all types.. In this regard, it was learned that pilots, crews and mechanics would be forced not to record accidents.

Although ANAC received this document by the date indicated, it did not apply any sanctions.. In this way, the forces Suspicions between the company and President Mauricio Macri, former Deputy Chief of Staff Mario Quintana and Minister of Transport Guillermo Dietrich. The three are accused in a criminal case brought by federal prosecutor Di Lello, who investigates whether they are the real owners of Flybondi.

In addition to not sanctioning the company, the executive attributed 284 new cabotage routes and international air links, in addition to the 85 of which it had already benefited. In all, the administration of Cambiemos granted him 369 to a form that started with a derisory capital of one hundred thousand pesos and did not buy any aircraft, since the five planes it uses are rented with temporary contracts.

Until the moment, Federal prosecutor Di Lello ordered the suspension of flights and the airport of El Palomar. Six months ago, the request for the final closure of the terminal was a follow-up to the danger of "the proximity of educational institutions to the approach of takeoff and landing of the flights" , "air traffic safety conflicts", among others. issues that jeopardize the "public safety" of pbadengers and neighbors in a densely populated area, such as the six surrounding municipalities (Hurlingham, Morón, La Matanza, Tres de Febrero, San Martín and San Miguel).

Tax He warned that justice should act "before a plane falls and that hundreds of deaths are deplored among the pbadengers and residents of El Palomar and its surroundings".

Although the application was ratified by two other federal prosecutors (Germán Moldes and Franco Picardi), Judge Martina Forns not only refused to close El Palomar, but went in the opposite direction. In this way, he approved the request of the Macri government to try to begin to close the cause of the collective refuge that had been filed in the Court n ° 2 of San Martín, in charge of the magistrate on September 14, 2017.

This could have been a tragedy: that 's what was the Flybondi plane after an accident at the Posadas airport in Misiones.

At present, Flybondi and JetSmart (whose owner, William Franke, contributed to the depletion of Aerolíneas Argentinas and Austral in the 1990s, leaving it bankrupt in 2001), use the airport, also denounced for its alleged links to drug trafficking. money laundering, has a lawsuit before the Supreme Court of Justice of the nation for the commercial use of the place. At the same time, the inhabitants of Hurlingham, Morón, Tres de Febrero, La Matanza and San Martín, who repudiated the arrival of the airlines, were mbadively rejected because of the damage and the contamination deeper and deeper.

In this context, at the end of last year, Julian Cook was removed from his position as CEO of Flybondi by decision of low-cost investors who disapproved with a sharp criticism his leadership at the head of the airline and in In particular, it has been rejected as the greatest strategic error. have chosen the El Palomar military base to fly to Buenos Aires.