BOGOTÁ (AFP) – Airlines on Monday scrapped flights from Colombia, blaming dwindling fuel stocks, then reinstated most of them as industry officials and the government disagreed on the cause of the interruption.
National carrier Avianca, which according to Colombia’s air transport regulator cancelled 24 flights on Monday, said in a statement it had been advised by suppliers of a cap on kerosene deliveries “for the rest of the month”.
Avianca flights to Sao Paulo, Santiago, Mexico City and Cancun were affected, according to the FlightAware tracking platform.
Latin America’s largest airline LATAM said it had to cancel 36 flights scheduled for Tuesday due to “restrictions on the supply of Jet A1 aviation fuel in some airports”.
But later on Monday, both companies said operations were back to normal and that they had received assurances of uninterrupted fuel supply. The government denied there had ever been a shortage, and blamed fuel distributor Terpel, owned by Chilean oil company Copec, for not doing its job.
Terpel blamed problems at the Reficar refinery in Cartagena, owned by state oil company Ecopetrol.
Ecopetrol said in a statement an “electrical failure” had affected production at Reficar between August 16 and 18.
President Gustavo Petro insisted the refinery problem had been fixed “without causing problems,” adding on X that it was incorrect “to report that flight cancellations had to do with the August 16 Reficar blackout.”
Ecopetrol said it would import 100,000 barrels of aviation fuel, possibly leading to an increase in ticket prices, according to the Transport Ministry.
