Chilejet (Santiago de Chile) and fellow Chilean start-up, One Airlines (Santiago de Chile), are on track to secure their respective Air Operators Certificates the Chilean civil aviation authority (Dirección General de Aeronáutica Civil - DGAC) has announced.
According to Chilean newspaper, Estrategia, ChileJet is backed by the European Capital Corporation, which in turn is owned by the Greek Asprou family of Inter European Airways (Cardiff) fame. It plans to offer charter flights to mining communities in both the north and south of the country.
For its part, One Airlines, which is also looking to enter the mining charter-flight sector, is backed by a Chilean company owned by Rio Baker with financial support provided by FK Holdings, owned by businessman Claudio Fisher. One has previously used chartered aircraft already operating on its behalf.
The DGAC also disclosed that Argentine operator, ARjet Airlines (Buenos Aires Jorge Newbery), and Peruvian Airlines (Lima International) have also submitted applications for a Chilean AOC in the hopes of tapping into the Chilean domestic and international markets.
ARjet operates charter flights throughout Argentina but has yet to disclose its intentions for the Chilean market.
Peruvian Airlines intends to use its Chilean AOC to open up its first international flights from Lima International to Santiago de Chile as well as from Lima and Tacna to the Chilean port town of Iquique. At present, its operations are restricted to domestic Peruvian operations.
Airline president, César Cataño, says his intention is to take on the likes of LAN Airlines (Santiago de Chile), Avianca (Bogotá) and SKY Airline (Chile) (H2, Santiago de Chile) as early as November this year.
It is to be recalled that in January this year, Uruguayan carrier BQB Líneas Aéreas (Punta del Este) secured its Chilean AOC allowing it to operate both scheduled and charter commercial passenger flights both within Chile and internationally.
