IATA seeks US antitrust approval for airlines to enter alliance and repatriate funds from Venezuela

lATA applied (29-Apr-2016) to the US Department of Transportation requesting approval for airline and their alliance partners serving Venezuela to discuss and potentially agree upon "one or more courses of action designed to restore their ability to provide economically viable air transportation services to passengers and shippers originating in Venezuela" and to effect release by the Government of Venezuela of USD3.8 billion of airline funds "whose repatriation and meaningful use has long been prevented by the Venezuelan authorities". lATA requests that such discussions be approved and fully immunised from US antitrust laws. The application requests that DoT grant immunized authority for all airlines authorised to make sales of air transportation to/from Venezuela, as well as their alliance partners, to meet and discuss joint courses of action designed to:

• Enhance their ability to provide economically viable services to passengers and shippers originating in Venezuela;
• Effect release and repatriation of revenues earned from sales of airline services in Venezuela that are in accounts currently restricted by the Venezuelan government.

According to the association:

• The present and previous Venezuelan administrations have "maintained complex and shifting currency regulations that effectively have prevented international airlines from repatriating or using revenues earned from their sales of passenger tickets or freight carriage in Venezuela and thus have effectively expropriated those airline revenues";
• Venezuelan policies and regulations have resulted in airlines that provided services purchased in Venezuela having obtained "no meaningful economic benefit from such prior services for several years and have no economically viable means of continuing to sell airline services in Venezuela";
• 24 international airlines have provided air transportation sold in Venezuela and have suffered the negative economic consequences of effectively not being paid;
• In addition to imposing a "severe economic burden" on the affected airlines, the Venezuelan government's practice "violates the terms of the US-Venezuela air transport agreement as well as the doing-business conditions of the intergovernmental air transport agreements authorising numerous non-US airlines to serve Venezuela". [more - original PR]