How Venezuelan airspace after the violent rejection of humanitarian aid

The violent day ended with a speech by Maduro in the which announced the rupture of the diplomatic and political relations with Colombia and set a deadline of 24 hours for the departure of the officials of this country in Venezuela.

The Government of Colombia, who recognizes the authority of Guaidó, proclaimed interim president of Venezuela by the National Assembly in order to achieve the transition of power and to call elections, He ordered the retirement of all his diplomatic staff after Maduro's speech, which rejected the parliament's decision and clung to power.

Guaidó had instead asked Bogota to keep his officials at their workplaces, but Foreign Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo said Saturday that "However, in order to preserve the life and integrity of Colombian officials, their trip to Colombia will be organized as soon as possible", in statements made by the agency EFE.

We did not know how the evacuation would take place, as political tensions in the region increase and the Chavez regime increasingly hardens its position, based in part on the control of the Bolivarian armed forces.

The scope of this closure, attributed to the National Institute of Civil Aeronautics (INAC) of Venezuela, is unclear. the same institution denied on its Twitter account the effective ban on commercial flights. Saturday the newspaper The National rather, he said by a source that the closure was real, although less formal: only official flights were allowed.

However, with or without official ban, at least since Thursday Venezuela it has become a desert island for the aeronautics, avoided by almost all airlines.

In fact, the Venezuelan aeronautical industry comes from years of decline due to the economic crisis, increasing violence in cities and low demand for flights, but in the last days, the sky seemed to close almost completely.

This Sunday, a day after the attempt to admit humanitarian aid, the airspace is practically empty, according to three sites monitoring public access.

But still they could be detected a handful of allegedly commercial thefts.

FlightRadar24 and RadarBox24 registered a Copa Airlines flight on the Caracas-Panama route (CMP220), while the first one is also inscribed of the Venezuelan airline Laser, without providing information on the destination and possibly charter flight.

McDonnell Douglas MD-82 from Laser was between Barquisimeto and Valencia, flying west, while Glbad's Boeing 737 had just taken off from Caracas, taking the same direction.

While FlightAware had detected three planes from Bogotá, Colombia, and towards Caracas, who then failed to report their position. These are GLG8378 and GLG8380, AeroGal, and AVA74 flights from Avianca. In the three cases operated with Airbus A320.

The first came to travel the road Quito-Bogota, the second Guayaquil-Bogota and the third Lima-Bogota, before taking other exceptional destinations.

Some time later, an Airbus A321 (Avianca 8412), which covers the road between Cali and Bogotá, also appears on the screen. move towards the Venezuelan borderand a Boeing 737-800 from Caribbean Airlines, which operates between Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago and operates in Venezuela's airspace.

At the same time, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of the United Statess, issued a cautionary note and a cautionary note with respect to all aircraft serving Venezuela or close to its airspacebecause of the "potential danger to civil aviation badociated with instability and political tensions".

More specifically, the note warns against the risk for commercial aircraft that badumes the strong presence of military units in the country.

In mid-February, while humanitarian aid was being collected in Colombia and Brazil, Maduro ordered the beginning of military exercises Bicentenario Angostura 2019, which included the deployment of Russian-made air defense batteries, such as S-300 missiles, Buk M2E and Igla-S laptops.