Just two months shy of celebrating a year of operations from Melbourne, LATAM’s leaders say they’re keen to increase the frequency of the service and hope to one day fly direct from Australia to Brazil.
Speaking at the CAPA Australia Pacific Summit in Sydney this week, the airline’s Senior Vice President of Sales, Nicolas Goldstein, revealed personal wishes to increase the Melbourne-Santiago service from three times weekly to daily as he believes there’s enough demand there to fill the extra capacity.
He said that since launching the non-stop flight in October last year, business from the Australian market has increased by 40 percent through a mix of both leisure and corporate travellers.
Vice versa, traffic from South America to Australia has also risen as more Latin Americans travel Down Under for leisure and educational reasons.
“There’s demand from both markets.”
Nicolas Goldstein, LATAM Senior Vice President of Sales
“You can see corporate and leisure travellers from Australia going to South America and from South America there are people travelling to Australia for education and leisure.”
As a result of this strong relationship, Goldstein hopes to increase Melbourne-Santiago service to daily “soon”.
Meanwhile, when asked if Sydney will ever see the carrier’s new long-haul A350, Goldstein laughed that “of course one day” the city will see the aircraft but explained that the plane is currently based in Sao Paulo and the carrier would need to open a route between Australia and Brazil first.
“I wish some day in the short term we will open this [Brazil-Australia] route.”
Nicolas Goldstein, LATAM Senior Vice President of Sales
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