Argentina re-opening international flights in August!

[antipodean]

Do you agree with Bajo that we won't see international flights in Argentina regularize until at least March 2021, and perhaps later?

Yes, it is the most likely scenario. Not just here in Argentina but in a lot of countries.
Important to stress the point that not having regularised flights does not mean having no flights - we already have regular flights to Europe, it is just limited to who is actually allowed to use them.

Australia and New Zealand are even forecasting July 2021 until regularisation of the travel situation based on the current spread of the virus around the world and risk that open borders entail. From early on these countries have been the most realistic and accurate in their assessments of the global situation. This one depends on the evolution of the pandemic particularly in a conservative political context such as Argentina.

If we check in with the reality of today, Argentina has already overtaken China in terms of amount of cases and we are rapidly approaching the 100,000 mark, making us amongst the most disease ridden countries in the world. Meaning not many countries will want to take us in for vacays, limiting our options for some time into the future.

For anyone with winter quarantine blues, apparently Barbados is giving out 1 year visas to anyone who wants to go there and work from home to wait out the pandemic.... tempted.

For those not able to pay $50,000 a week for a beachfront villa, the Argentine government is thinking of an idea to stimulate domestic tourism in 2021 by giving everyone a 50% rebate of the flights and accommodation charges on a prepaid debit card. This is also a pretty telling sign about expectations towards international tourism in the year ahead.

 

[Somewhereinba]

Tourism should be banned. Unless the Argentine Government is willing to pay people their normal salary and force them to stop working and stay home then they should be allowed to work (and travel if required). There is no reason international travel cannot be accepted if the proper protocols are put in place regarding tests/quarantine etc

 

[antipodean]

https://www.handelsblatt.com/untern...er&ticket=ST-1539633-Ju0GXwLQveri1lKWVVpD-ap2

Came across this interesting idea being floated in Germany / EU by a major business lobby. Restrict airlines from taking payment in advance and give travellers the option to pay when they checkin - similar to a hotel. This way avoids all the issues we saw with airlines taking forever to give people refunds and people getting stranded without cash to buy a new way home. The argument is that now is the perfect time to change the system since airlines do not have many advanced booking and thus it would not impact their cash flow drastically.

Will be interesting to see how these "pandemic years" change travel from what we once knew it to be...

(In other news from Germany, a lab there expects to have a few million doses of vaccine ready by December. Still question marks around if it actually works or not and for how long it provides immunity. However the lab cautions that in order for it to be effective for global travel at least 90% of the worlds population need to have immunity - something that would realistically take 10 years. By end of 2021 they may be able to produce about a billion doses.)

 

[Renzi]

If we check in with the reality of today, Argentina has already overtaken China in terms of amount of cases and we are rapidly approaching the 100,000 mark, making us amongst the most disease ridden countries in the world. Meaning not many countries will want to take us in for vacays, limiting our options for some time into the future.

This is somewhat misleading. We aren't even in the top 20 globally in total cases, or top 30 in total fatalities (although, of course, testing here has been inadequate, to say the least). My home state of Massachusetts, which has about 1/3 the population of GBA alone, has more cases than all of ARG. I also wouldn't believe any numbers coming from the CCP. I don't say that as a Sinophobe, but as an academic with a background in IR.

Finding a flight is one thing, finding a country that will accept anyone with a USPP is another. Here are some, and it's not very encouraging: https://nyti.ms/38z4mHg.

I'm personally holding out for Costa Rica. It opens up in August (if this doesn't get pushed back yet again), and flights from Miami right now are around $70.

 

[antipodean]

This is somewhat misleading. We aren't even in the top 20 globally in total cases, or top 30 in total fatalities (although, of course, testing here has been inadequate, to say the least). My home state of Massachusetts, which has about 1/3 the population of GBA alone, has more cases than all of ARG. I also wouldn't believe any numbers coming from the CCP. I don't say that as a Sinophobe, but as an academic with a background in IR.

I am not sure it is. According to Hopkins Argentina is ranked 22. We know that Argentina was slow to test, so the real numbers are probably much higher (like China, there is a strong argument for not trusting Argentine data entirely) and unlike many countries in the top 20, Argentina has an accelerating trend whereas others are slowing and seeing a downward trend of infections and new fatalities, indicating that it won't be long before we are in the "top 20". There is little point in comparing to "extreme" countries like the US or Brazil which have done little to suppress the spread of infection - the scary and more relevant comparison would be a country like Peru which has had strict measures and border closures in place for a similar amount of time as Argentina and due to these measures being inefficient, it did nothing to save it from this honor or make it a safer place to travel to and from.

And regarding fatalities, I think Argentina and other "late bloomers" will be lower than many of the "first wave" countries due to advances in the treatment of critical cases since in April reducing mortality rates across the board - but that alone is not going to open borders.

 

[Kula]

Can`t go through whole the tread. Somebody please be so kind to summarize it, when will be international fights re-opened?

 

[jblaze5779]

No one knows

 

[Renzi]

Can`t go through whole the tread. Somebody please be so kind to summarize it, when will be international fights re-opened?

Google "international flights + Argentina"

 

[Alby]

Yes, it is the most likely scenario. Not just here in Argentina but in a lot of countries.
Important to stress the point that not having regularised flights does not mean having no flights - we already have regular flights to Europe, it is just limited to who is actually allowed to use them.

Australia and New Zealand are even forecasting July 2021 until regularisation of the travel situation based on the current spread of the virus around the world and risk that open borders entail. From early on these countries have been the most realistic and accurate in their assessments of the global situation. This one depends on the evolution of the pandemic particularly in a conservative political context such as Argentina.

If we check in with the reality of today, Argentina has already overtaken China in terms of amount of cases and we are rapidly approaching the 100,000 mark, making us amongst the most disease ridden countries in the world. Meaning not many countries will want to take us in for vacays, limiting our options for some time into the future.

For anyone with winter quarantine blues, apparently Barbados is giving out 1 year visas to anyone who wants to go there and work from home to wait out the pandemic.... tempted.

For those not able to pay $50,000 a week for a beachfront villa, the Argentine government is thinking of an idea to stimulate domestic tourism in 2021 by giving everyone a 50% rebate of the flights and accommodation charges on a prepaid debit card. This is also a pretty telling sign about expectations towards international tourism in the year ahead.

The problem for Australia and New Zealand with their July 2021 forecast is that both countries are aiming for erradication. In the case of NZ the policy is declared; in Australia the official policy has been "supression", but the government's reaction to the current outbreak in Melbourne clearly indicates that, either by design or default, erradication is now the objective--and that seems also now to be the expectation of many of the citizenry. I don't believe erradication is possible (because, as Australia has just discovered--and NZ may yet discover--the moment you achieve it you drop your guard and shortly thereafter you discover you have no longer achieved it), but let's assume it is possible and that by July 2021 it has been acheived. At that point, how will Australia and NZ regularize international air travel? Unless the far-from-certain vaccine suddenly appears, the only way to preserve erradication is to maintain the 14-day quarantine indefinitely, in which case the only flights that will ever be possible will be those few made by foreign carriers bringing returing expatriates.

On the question of the accuracy of Australia's predictions about the world situation, it is worth noting that at his announcement of the country's COVID stimulus package and other measures back in March, the Prime Minister said (quite matter-of-factly) that some countries would not continue to exist as countries because of the virus and he was determined that Australia would not be one of those. That comment did not receive the attention it deserved at that time. He would not have let this view slip unless that was the view of his own Office of National Assessments. It is worth remembering, and worth thinking about as we watch the coming health, social, and economic turmoil in Argentina roll out.

 

[antipodean]

I do agree with those points however in an Argentine context there is an unclear objective. The government says it is “just” trying to slow the spread but their actions are indicative of wanting to suppress it. For example some provinces like San Juan went back to phase one after reporting just one case after months with zero cases... That is more extreme than what happened in Melbourne after a few hundred new cases. Politically and economically Argentina has much more to loose than Australia if there is a second wave, meaning it is logical to expect it will be more conservative with travel, at least requiring quarantine etc., until it is safe.

For Australian and New Zealand normalization I would suggest that will still only come from a treatment or vaccine breakthrough that still appears to be progressing and is still fundamental to all “optimistic” projections like this. July is within the timeline issued by some labs who would expect to have the first batch ready to go by DEC20 and a billion produced by DEC21. Getting their hands on 20 million odd doses by mid-2021 should not be too difficult. (Btw looks like the clinical trials of the Pfizer Vaccine will happen here in Argentina, so am sure we will hear if it works or not.)

For smaller countries with financial resources vaccinating the majority of people quickly and requiring vaccines for inbound travelers is easier to do. Once a country is largely vaccinated it doesn’t care who it lets in and other countries don’t see a risk letting in their people. It does still mean a big drop in numbers since there are billions of people on the planet that would need to get immunity plus the economic fallout, but it does mean routes to most destinations can resume and be sustained in some form (“normalization” does not mean a return to pre-covid scale of travel - that forecast is now 2023-2024)

The comment about some countries not existing as countries any more - wasn’t that with EU countries and other smaller countries dependent on political / economic union in mind? For the EU sharing the debt and a likely need to have a unified border/ immigration and health policy would likely lead to erosion of sovereign rights of individual members, leading to greater political union effectively making the EU the “country” while leaving individual member states as different “nations” within it?