British Airways to Stop Flights to Colombia

British Airways (BA), one of Europe’s largest air carriers, will cease flying to Colombia on February 2005 in an effort to stop the bleeding of heavy losses the company’s operations in that South American nation have sustained over the past five years.

This is the second European airline that has called flights to and from Colombia to a halt. Germany’s Lufthansa has not flown to that nation since 2002.

”The rationale behind this decision is completely commercial because these flights have been reporting nothing but losses over the last five years. We operate in a highly competitive market, so we cannot take these losses any longer,” informed Robin Hayes, BA executive vice president for the Americas.

BA has been making three flights a week from London to Bogota –with stopovers in Venezuela’s Caracas- since 1985.

Nevertheless, BA will keep up operations in Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo.

”We’ve worked diligently to improve the route’s profitability in recent years, and despite training upgrades, revenues have remained bogged down,” Mr. Hayes commented in a press release.