Viva Air Begins Domestic Humanitarian Flights Between San Andrés Archipelago & Colombian Mainland

Last week, Viva Air began limited domestic humanitarian flights returning residents of the San Andrés Archipelago in the Caribbean Sea from other parts of mainland Colombia and also bringing home mainland Colombians who were stranded on the Islands. On the first flight, 150 passengers flew to Medellín from San Andrés and 60 traveled to San Andrés from Medellín.

Everth Hawkins Sjogreen, governor of the San Andrés Archipelago. San Andrés is a Colombian department that uniquely, consists of a group of islands far offshore in the Caribbean Sea and is very popular with tourists.

“On behalf of the Archipelago I want to thank Viva Air for giving a hand to those islanders who because of COVID-19 were stranded in different cities of the country. After so many efforts, we found an important ally that allowed us to give those distressed parents the opportunity, to reunite with their children, and those who had left the islands for medical reasons and had no way to return once the crisis began. It is exciting to hear again the roar of their planes in our territory, and we hope that once the airports are reopened, we will resume teamwork to give all Colombians the opportunity to come and enjoy our 7-color sea and liberate themselves from the stress that isolation has generated for them in recent months,” said the governor of San Andres, Everth Hawkins.

“We are aware of the social commitment that we fulfill as an airline by making possible the dream of thousands of people to return to their homes. For this reason, we started special domestic flights to and from San Andrés from the hand of the regional authorities. This is the first of several domestic flights scheduled to connect to different regions of the country, always with the authorities and in compliance with biosafety protocols, “said Francisco Lalinde, Vice President of Operations for Viva Air. “We invite the other local and regional authorities to make this type of flight with Viva to repatriate their citizens who are in other regions of the country,” he added.

Since March, Viva Air has flown 156 national and international humanitarian flights transporting 11,450 passengers.