Airlines canceled flights from Colombia on Monday, blaming dwindling fuel supplies, but then resumed most flights as industry officials and the government disagreed about the cause of the disruption.
National airline Avianca, which canceled 24 flights on Monday according to Colombia’s air traffic authority, said in a statement that it had been informed by its suppliers of a cap on jet fuel deliveries “for the remainder of the month.”
According to the tracking platform FlightAware, Avianca flights to Sao Paulo, Santiago, Mexico City and Cancun were affected.
Latin America’s largest airline, LATAM, said it had to cancel 36 flights scheduled for Tuesday due to “limitations in the supply of Jet A1 aviation fuel at some airports.”
But later on Monday, both companies said operations were back to normal and they had been assured of uninterrupted fuel supplies.
The government denied there had ever been a shortage and blamed the fuel supplier Terpel, owned by the Chilean oil company Copec, for failing to do its job.
Terpel blamed problems at the Reficar refinery in Cartagena, which belongs to the state-owned oil company Ecopetrol.
Ecopetrol said in a statement that a “power outage” affected production at Reficar between August 16 and 18.
President Gustavo Petro insisted that the problem at the refinery had been resolved “without causing any problems,” adding on X that it was false “to report that the flight cancellations had anything to do with the Reficar blackout of August 16.”
Ecopetrol had previously announced on Monday that it would import 100,000 barrels of aviation fuel, which the Ministry of Transport said could potentially lead to an increase in ticket prices.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) warned on Sunday that a fuel shortage could lead to flight cancellations and a lower number of passengers per aircraft.
According to IATA, which represents more than 300 airlines, distributors stopped supplying fuel to 11 terminals and issued “critical” stock alerts for many others.
However, the airport authority Aerocivil insisted that kerosene supplies were “sufficient”.
Petro said there would be “investigations” by market regulators.
The opposition accuses the president, who wants to reduce the dependence of his Colombian economy on oil exports, of appointing inexperienced people to head Ecopetrol.
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