Venezuela's Aserca Airlines is looking to its Caribbean subsidiary to expand a US presence otherwise frozen for Venezuelan airlines.
Air Aruba, which is 70% owned by Aserca, is expanding its Aruba hub with three more McDonnell Douglas DC-9s, more flights to Caracas, and listings in more computer reservation systems.
Under the US Federal Aviation Administration's safety assessment programme, Venezuela is in Category II, which freezes US operations for Venezuelan airlines. Aserca has no authority to fly to the USA, but Air Aruba enjoys broad authority under an open skies bilateral with the USA.
Aserca and Continental Airlines have applications pending to codeshare between and behind gateways, but they, with all other codeshare requests by US and Venezuelan airlines, seem to be blocked by Venezuela's Category II status. Aeropostal and American Airlines took the unusual step of supporting the Aserca- Continental request in the hope that Washington's approval of it might lead to approval of their application.
Conversely, Aeropostal opposed Air Aruba's request to renew its US authority after Aserca became its owner. Aeropostal claims that Aserca was simply using Air Aruba sixth freedoms to serve the USA. But the US Department of Transportation (DoT) disagreed, stressing that Air Aruba flies its own aircraft with its own crews, and the USA-Aruba bilateral allows it to carry US traffic beyond Aruba.
Aserca and Air Aruba are walking a fine line. On the one hand, they want to attract US-Venezuelan traffic via Aruba. To that end, Air Aruba promotes its Venezuela service in the USA and keeps the same flight number on its flights from Miami through Aruba to Caracas. On the other hand, the DoT has warned that it will monitor Air Aruba to ensure that it does not transfer benefits to Aserca that would not be available under the US-Venezuelan bilateral.
Source: Airline Business
