The controversial United Airlines .has announced that they will suspend flights going to Venezuela next month. This move by the company further cuts off access to the Venezuelans who are currently suffering from economic chaos and violent political protests.
The daily service between the cities of Houston and Caracas will be canceled, effective July 1, due to low demand, United Airlines spokesman Charles Hobart said in an email to Reuters.
The United Airlines' low demand resulting in the failure of meeting a satisfying financial profit could be attributed to the ongoing crisis faced by the government of Venezuela. For the past two months, anti-government protests have plagued the country due to the drastic cut of imported food and medicine.
This failure of importing food and medicine in order to conserve the cash needed to pay bondholders is the result of the sudden decline of oil production, which is the worst in 15 years. United Airlines was always used by oil executives in Texas and Venezuelans living in the U.S. when traveling to Caracas.
In an article published by Bloomberg, this action by United Airlines is the latest string of airlines pulling out or cutting access to Venezuela, a country that runs under a Socialist ideology. Last month, Transportes Aereos Portugueses or TAP stopped selling plane tickets going to Venezuela because they are not getting the money from those sales.
Various carriers like the United Airlines have already asked the US Department of Transportation last year for antitrust immunity so that they could discuss ways in retrieving $3.8 billion that was held hostage by Venezuela's economic collapse. In this talk, they are expecting the government on virtually halting repatriation of past ticket sales made in bolivars, Venezuela's local currency.
