The Argentinian and US governments have gone to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and made a claim against Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro-led government after it closed Venezuelan airspace to all Argentinian-registered aircraft due to the country’s involvement in the seizure and subsequent scrapping of Emtrasur Cargo’s B747-300M.
Members of both governments asked for Venezuela's airspace to be reopened. Aerolíneas Argentinas (AR, Buenos Aires Jorge Newbery) has so far borne the brunt of the measure, having to reroute two of its flights, departing from Buenos Aires Ministro Pistarini to Punta Cana and New York JFK to avoid Venezuelan airspace, ch-aviation previously reported.
However, the Venezuelan authorities have defended their actions, arguing that Argentina and the United States had violated the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. It will only revert the sanctions when the Argentinian government “compensates” the now-dormant Emtrasur “for damages incurred”. ICAO told ch-aviation that “at this time [...] it is not in a position to release any information or a statement relating to the matter.”
Emtrasur is the cargo branch of state-owned Conviasa (V0, Caracas Simón Bolivar). It only had one aircraft, YV3531 (msn 23413), which was detained in Argentina on June 2022. After a seizure warrant and a lengthy extradition process, it was ferried from Buenos Aires Ministro Pistarini to Miami Dade-Collier on February 12, 2024, where it was broken up.
