WAITING FOR FLIGHTS<\/h3>\n

For domestic flights, airlines now typically sell only one-way tickets. When people want to return home from a trip, they usually have to line up at the airport on the day they hope to travel.<\/p>\n

Ismelida Fernandez said she flew to Caracas from Margarita Island with her sister to get treatment for a brain tumor and had to wait 24 hours to get a return ticket.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy sister was crying all night from the pain in her head,\u201d said Fernandez, at the Maiquetia airport outside Caracas last week. She said she was still on a waiting list to fly home, adding, \u201cIt makes me feel completely helpless.\u201d<\/p>\n

President Nicolas Maduro blames the country\u2019s crisis on an \u201ceconomic war\u201d that he says is orchestrated by political adversaries with the help of Washington.<\/p>\n

Critics of the leftist president say the problems are the result of the government\u2019s currency and price controls as well as declining production of oil, which provides almost all of the OPEC nation\u2019s hard currency.<\/p>\n

Airlines are not allowed to sell tickets for domestic flights above the prices set by the government. Flights generally cost about half the price of a taxi ride to the airport.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/div>\n

But getting hold of tickets usually requires buying them from intermediaries for more than double their list price.<\/p>\n

\u201cRegulations make domestic flights unprofitable,\u201d said Nicola Furnari of travel and tourism industry association Avavit. \u201cThe problem is that the real prices are well above what the average Venezuelan can afford.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some local companies have sought to maintain their domestic operations by opening up foreign flights, which are paid in dollars, to compensate for losses on their domestic operations and to cater to people leaving the country for good.<\/p>\n

But Ceveta\u2019s Alvarez said even with hard currency income, domestic airlines struggle to buy the parts they need because they cannot get credit.<\/p>\n

At the Maiquetia airport, groups of people routinely wait for two or three days, sitting on their suitcases or on the ground, in hopes of getting on a flight.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s terrible, terrible,\u201d said Carlos Araujo, 33, who said he had waited 24 hours to buy a ticket to visit his grandmother in hospital.<\/p>\n

\n
• Reuters (Maiquetia)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

  .<\/p>\n

  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  A Laser Airlines plane taxis on a runway at Simon Bolivar airport in Caracas, Venezuela July 2, 2018. REUTERS\/Marco Bello   Venezuela\u2019s domestic airline industry is struggling to maintain operations due to hyperinflation and shortages of spare parts, according to an industry association, making it increasingly hard to obtain tickets and causing chronic flight delays….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":11684,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,2,24,47],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11683"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11683"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11685,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11683\/revisions\/11685"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}