International airline group aims high

LANPERU is a subsidiary of LanChile, member of the ONE WORLD ALLIANCE. LanPeru connects Peru with the world’s most important cities.

For obvious reasons, getting tourists into Peru is one of the fundamental priorities of the current administration’s plans to make the tourism sector a steady source of foreign earnings and jobs. Special importance has been placed on the newcomer LanPeru airlines, a subsidiary of LanChile that has been operating since 1999 with a handful of domestic flights, direct international routes to Miami and service sharing agreements with LanChile for flights to Los Angeles and New York. The Lan group, however, has been operating in Peru for 73 years with annual sales topping $400 million.
“Currently we have around 600 direct employees and are expanding our fleet and number of routes, which has allowed us to increase passenger traffic by 120,000, or 40% more than the previous year,” says Sergio Purcell Robinson, CEO of LanPeru.
Internationally, Mr. Purcell says LanPeru is working on building up a South American regional hub that will eventually serve the United States. “We are already flying to Miami, Los Angeles and New York. Now we are developing routes into the Caribbean region. In fact, we have opened offices in Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Europe.”

He adds that special attention is being placed on Argentina, which is a natural market for Peru and one of the countries with the largest number of potential tourists for Peru. “Right now, there are only two flights a day between Lima and Buenos Aires, while there are 16 a day between Santiago and Buenos Aires. The difference
is abysmal and so the tourist potential is huge.”