The Secretary for Malvinas, Antarctica and the South Atlantic at the Argentine Foreign Ministry, Guillermo Carmona, celebrated the reestablishment of the flights that connect Argentina and Chile that pass through the Malvinas Islands, and recalled that the Argentine government had claimed in March of this year the return of these aerial communications “after two years of British unilateral suspension”.
“Today the restoration of the Punta Arenas-Río Gallegos-Malvinas flights was announced. It should be remembered that it was the Argentine government that claimed it after two years of the British unilateral suspension decision,” Carmona wrote on his Twitter account, where he also shared the Foreign Ministry statement of March 1, 2022, which “considers the resumption of the aforementioned regular air service necessary and timely”.
In addition, the Malvinas secretary detailed: “The measure that enables flights from 7/2/22 next will end the problem of those stranded in the Malvinas (especially from Chile) and the visit of relatives of the fallen and veterans to the Darwin Cemetery”.
And he remarked that “Argentina has once again offered this year the establishment of a regular flight between Malvinas and the Argentine mainland with a flag line.”
The Chilean airline LATAM announced that as of July 2 it will restart its flights between Punta Arenas (Chile) and Malvinas, which has been without a regular air connection since March 2020.
The July schedule presented by the company includes flights between the Chilean city and the islands for days 2, 23 and 30.
To this are added flights for July 9 and 16 between Punta Arenas, Rio Gallegos and Malvinas.
The statement presented by the Foreign Ministry in March demanded “from the United Kingdom the reestablishment of the direct regular service between the Malvinas Islands and Punta Arenas (Republic of Chile) with two monthly stops in Río Gallegos (Province of Santa Cruz, Argentine Republic)”, which had been suspended since March 2020 due to the restrictions of the pandemic caused by Covid-19.
In this sense, the Foreign Ministry considered the resumption of the aforementioned regular air service “necessary and timely”, which would allow “meeting both the needs of the inhabitants of the islands and those of the inhabitants of the continental territory, especially that of the relatives of visit the graves of their loved ones who fell in the conflict”, in an international context where air services have been normalized.
