Airlines suspend Venezuela routes

This item appears on page 4 of the July 2016 issue.

Two airlines, Lufthansa and LATAM, announced that they would be suspending flights to Venezuela. Because of monetary restrictions in that country, it is difficult to exchange Venezuelan bolivars into US dollars, causing foreign companies doing business there to lose a great deal of money due to Venezuela’s high inflation rate, currently averaging 481.5%.

Lufthansa’s Frankfurt-Caracas route was scheduled to cease as of June 18, while LATAM immediately canceled its São Paolo-Caracas route on May 31, with its Lima- and Santiago-Caracas flights to stop by the end of July. As of press time, the US carriers American, Delta and United still operated flights to Venezuela.