PAL Airlines (Santiago de Chile) management has decided to abandon its mining charter operations in favour of holiday flights as part of plans to revive the ailing airline's waning fortunes.
Chile's El Mercurio newspaper says the airline's decision to put its traditional mining charter flights on hiatus for the time being was symptomatic of the sluggish Chilean economy. Management also blamed government's policy of granting foreign carriers domestic traffic rights (cabotage) with local carriers seeing little, if any, reciprocity in kind.
With debts mounting to over USD10million, PAL has also decided to open up its MRO base to other airlines thereby diversifying its income source.
In a more drastic act, management has also studied the possibility of selling various assets - among them the airline's Air Operators Certificate (AOC), the brand and its MRO facility - to other interested parties such as One Airlines (Santiago de Chile) in a bid to raise much needed cash.
PAL was recently forced to at least temporarily suspend operations after a Chilean civil aviation authority (Dirección General de Aeronáutica Civil - DGAC) audit of its finances showed it had defaulted in its payment of passenger embarkation taxes as well as aeronautical charges.
