Colombia’s El Dorado airport in Bogota resumed limited operations on Monday with flights to, among others, the United States.
Bogota’s airport is one of four airports that will be handling international flights following strict biosafety measures to prevent outbreaks of the coronavirus that forced President Ivan Duque to suspend all international travel in March.
The city of Miami in Florida on Saturday welcomed the first flight that had traveled from Medellin via Cartagena.
The airport of Cali, Colombia’s third largest city, also resumed flights, but only to the authorized destinations.
Apart from the United States, Colombia’s health ministry and foreign authorities authorized flights from and to Mexico, Dominican Republic, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia and Guatemala.
All passengers must show they tested negative for COVID-19 for them to be allowed to board any flight, according to the Health Ministry.
Colombia’s civil aviation authority Aerocivil has been negotiating with aviation authorities from around the globe about the conditions that would allow the resumption of flights.
Whether a passenger must go into quarantine on arrival depends on the health regulations per country.
How long a a full resumption of flights will take depends largely on other countries’ authorities. Whether all flights will resume depends on each airlines as some have found themselves in serious financial trouble after the virtual shutdown of the airports earlier this year.
Colombia’s aviation authority hopes to include Peru in the list of countries to open first, but that country will remain its airports closed until December.