Chilean budget carrier SKY has expressed its interest in operating domestic routes within Argentina given President Javier Milei's shift to open skies policies, as recent agreements with Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Canada and Panama would corroborate. Owned by the descendants of Jürgen Paulmann, co-founder with his brother Horst of the Jumbo supermarket chain, SKY currently flies from Santiago to Mendoza, Bariloche, and Buenos Aires. Pursuant to Milei's Emergency Decree (DNU) 70/2023, Argentina has been deregulating its airline services since June 29, when the portions of the measure relevant in this regard became fully enforceablle after not being challenged.
Other agreements in force between Argentina and Chile, and also Uruguay allow an airline from one country to access domestic routes of the other, it was explained. And SKY intends to capitalize on that clause, Clarín reported this weekend. The company would thus fly within Argentina as a domestic airline, but with Chilean-registered aircraft and crews.
If everything goes as planned, Argentina would once again have three low cost airlines, as it did in 2019 (Flybondi, JetSmart and Norwegian, the latter leaving the country after selling its operations to JetSmart). Sky was founded in 2001 in Chile by Jürgen Paulmann, who in Argentina was best known for being the brother of Hörst Paulmann. Born in Germany in the 1930s, they arrived in southern Chile in the late 1950s.
Jürgen Paulmann passed away in 2014. His s.
