Seventeen airlines operate in Santiago de Chile’s Arturo Merino Benítez Airport, with a network of 36 international destinations.
By December 2022, more than 18 million passengers are projected to transit through Santiago Airport. Although these figures are better than in 2020 and 2021, they are still below the nearly 25 million people who traveled in 2019, before the pandemic.
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On October 30, flight QF27 landed from Sydney, operated by Australian airline Qantas. The arrival of the Boeing 787 aircraft, with its characteristic red tail and a kangaroo, marked a new milestone for the reactivation of routes to and from Santiago’s International Airport.
This nonstop flight, which connected the capitals of Chile and Australia, was suspended in March 2020 due to the pandemic. After almost 32 months, Qantas returned to Santiago Airport with four flights a week from Sydney.
“The return of Qantas airline will boost connectivity between Chile and Oceania, but also with Asia. By returning to this route, competition increases, and Santiago’s Airport resumes its role as a strategic point of connection between Australia and the rest of South America,” said François-Regis Le Miere, General Manager of Nuevo Pudahuel, operator of Santiago Airport.
Chile’s Undersecretary of Tourism Veronica Kunze added: “We are delighted that Qantas is returning to link Santiago with Sydney, which will allow us to reach different places in the world and attract foreign tourists to come to our country.”
Qantas was one of many foreign airlines that decided to return to Chile this long weekend. On Monday, October 31, at night, a flight operated by LEVEL, a Spanish low-cost airline, which suspended its operations due to the pandemic, also arrived directly from Barcelona. It is the only one that makes flights at lower prices between Chile and Europe.
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