Image source, Juan BARRETO / AFP via Getty Images
“I was flying on November 24 and, when I was almost at the door of the plane, they told me that the flight was canceled. Now I don’t know when I will return.”
Juan Carlos Rodríguez is one of the hundreds of Venezuelans who have been stranded these days at the Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas airport (Spain) as a result of the announcements that the United States government has made about Venezuela in the last week.
On November 21, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) urged airlines to “exercise extreme caution” when flying over Venezuela and the southern Caribbean, given what it considered “a potentially dangerous situation in the region.”
The warning caused 8 international airlines to suspend their flights to the Caribbean country, which was responded to by the Venezuelan authorities with the cancellation of the air traffic rights of six of those companies.
But the situation did not stop there: on Saturday, President Donald Trump announced that the airspace “over” and “around” Venezuela should be considered closed “completely.”
The Venezuelan authorities described the announcement as a “colonialist threat” and assured that they were activating “all multilateral mechanisms” to achieve “the immediate cessation of this illegitimate and illicit action.”
However, since Trump’s announcement, Venezuelan airspace has registered traffic much lower than usual.
Image source, RONALD PENA R/EPA/Shutterstock
Almost clear skies
Trump’s announcement has aggravated Venezuela’s air disconnection with the rest of the world.
A look at the air monitoring portal Flightradar24.com showed, between Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, just a handful of planes flying over Venezuela, most of them belonging to national airlines or private airlines covering internal routes.
During the weekend, only two international airlines—Panamanian COPA and Colombian Wingo—operated in the country, according to information available on the website of the Simón Bolívar de Maiquetía international airport, which serves Caracas.
COPA announced that it would continue to operate two daily flights between Panama and Caracas, although only during daylight hours.
For its part, Wingo reported that it will continue connecting Bogotá and Caracas, while Boliviana de Aviación (BoA) continued to offer tickets to the Venezuelan capital.
Of almost a hundred operations planned in Maiquetía for Sunday (takeoffs and landings), 20 were international flights to four destinations (Bogotá, Lima, Curacao and Panama), but only six corresponded to foreign airlines, according to the pro-government media Laiguana.tv.
Before the crisis, the number of flights to and from Venezuela was 105 per week, but in recent days it has fallen to 79, a reduction of 24.7%.
The situation is not new for Venezuelans, who in the last decade have seen how their connections with the rest of the world have been reduced, both due to the economic and political crisis that the country is going through and due to the covid pandemic.
In terms of cargo, two aircraft from the Colombian firm Aerosucre were sighted.
Image source, RONALD PENA R/EPA/Shutterstock
On your own
Although Vice President Delcy Rodríguez announced on Saturday night the implementation of “a special plan” for the return of stranded Venezuelans, so far no concrete actions have been reported.
“We don’t have any information from the Embassy. They don’t even answer the phones. We hope to have news tomorrow,” passenger Juan Carlos Rodríguez told BBC Mundo this Sunday from Madrid, criticizing the behavior of the airlines.
“(The Venezuelan airline) Estelar has not taken responsibility nor has it offered any type of assistance. What they did was send a group to Medellín (Colombia) so that they would later see how they returned on their own to their homes in Venezuela,” he narrated.
“I think that was a cruel decision, because if you don’t have the financial means to stay in Madrid, how are they going to send you to a city hundreds of kilometers from the border with Venezuela?” he added.
Rodríguez commented that some of those stranded were taken to a shelter and received assistance from the Spanish Red Cross, because they lacked money and family in Spain.
“We are asking to be sent to Bogotá (Colombia) or Panama, because flights to Venezuela continue to leave from there,” said the renewable energy specialist, who was surprised by the crisis in Madrid.
Rodríguez’s testimony seems to be repeated in other cases.
“They tell me that they will refund my money, that I have to wait for the situation to be resolved or go to Bogotá and take the first flight,” explained Luis Morales Peix to the EFE agency, a Spaniard who was visiting Caracas and who claimed to have spent an additional US$2,000 to get to Colombia, a cost that came out of his pocket.
If the situation continues, Colombian and Venezuelan media anticipate an increase in land crossings between both countries in the coming days.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) estimates that the suspension of flights to and from Venezuela affects about 15,000 passengers each week, according to the organization’s vice president, Peter Cerdá, to the American network CNN.
Image source, AFP via Getty Images
Fewer tourists and deportees
The US measures not only affect Venezuelans who wish to leave or return to the country, but also international tourism and even the deportations of Venezuelan migrants ordered by Trump.
The Russian operator Pegas Touristik announced on Sunday that it will redirect tourists who were planning to travel to Venezuela to Varadero (Cuba), according to the EFE agency.
In recent years, Margarita Island, in the eastern Venezuelan Caribbean, had become a popular destination for Russian tourists.
For its part, the Venezuelan government denounced that Washington “has unilaterally suspended” the repatriations of Venezuelans.
The US announcements regarding Venezuelan airspace have increased tensions between both countries, which have intensified due to the military deployment ordered by the White House in the Caribbean with the declared objective of stopping drug trafficking.
However, both Caracas and numerous observers consider that the operation actually seeks to force Nicolás Maduro out of power.
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