Argentina has authorized the Chilean arm of low-cost carrier JetSMART to fly domestic routes inside the country, in a disposition published Wednesday in the Boletín Oficial, the official gazette.
Disposition 27/2026 of the Transport Secretariat lets JetSMART Airlines S.p.A., the Chile-registered company controlled by the US investment fund Indigo Partners, run scheduled domestic and international passenger and cargo services with traffic rights up to the “ninth freedom”. That is the most extensive right in aviation: flying passengers between two points in Argentina with no link to a flight from Chile. The “eighth freedom” lets a foreign airline carry domestic passengers on a leg that continues an international flight. The disposition rests on the April 2024 air-services memorandum between Argentina and Chile, and the civil aviation regulator ANAC gave a favorable opinion, according to the text.
The permit is a regulatory clearance, and the disposition itself adds no domestic route. The only new service the Transport Secretariat’s announcement mentions is international: Santiago de Chile to Rio de Janeiro and Florianópolis, Brazil, with a stop at Aeroparque Jorge Newbery, Buenos Aires’ domestic and regional airport. JetSMART already flies domestic routes through its Argentine subsidiary, JetSMART Airlines S.A., which has its own certificate and a locally based fleet. The new permit covers the Chilean company, so it could add domestic flights of its own alongside the subsidiary’s.
For travelers, the permit opens room for more domestic flights. The government describes its open-skies policy as a way to promote competition, and JetSMART’s share of the domestic market has been growing. ANAC figures show it carried 442,347 domestic passengers in September, a 31% share against 23% a year earlier. Aerolíneas Argentinas had 66%. Flybondi, which has filed for court protection from creditors in a restructuring after two months grounded, carried no domestic passengers in September.
JetSMART announced in June that it would add 10 Airbus A321 jets, an investment of more than US$550 million, to reach 23 aircraft in Argentina by January 2027. It has 17 now.
JetSMART is not the first foreign airline cleared for domestic flights. LATAM, which left Argentina’s domestic market in 2020, received ninth-freedom rights in December 2025 through Disposition 46/2025, and said at the time the permit did not mean immediate new routes.
To fly a new domestic route, JetSMART must submit its proposal to ANAC.
