"In Latin America, the number of seats sold by United is growing, we are already operating the same scales as before the pandemic," says Frederick Thome, director of Sales for the Andean Region and Central America for United Airlines, who had a few minutes on the IPW of San Antonio to talk with ABC MUNDIAL.

"We are working to operate more flights to the, it is important, because you need to have the seats to be able to sell and put together packages. In the case of Argentina we are quite optimistic because we are going to add additional flights in the season between November and March, in the for the summer in Argentina. So we are going to increase from daily flights to 10 weekly flights and we are working to have some competitive rates that help the wholesaler to be able to put together packages, to be able to sell the air along with the hotels, with the cars, etc".

"We have seen a very high demand after the pandemic. Not only from the North American passenger, also in Latin America. In Argentina we also see many people who want to go out and travel and not only as an experience but also to visit relatives. It has been a higher demand than we expected and we are also seeing that as a result of that we have seen that the rates have been a little higher, compared to the pre-pandemic. It is a matter of demand and supply. That is why we are very optimistic with these additional flights to Buenos Aires.

It is more than interesting because here in the United States there is a lot of noise, for example, that a recession is coming, but you continue to travel. What is seen in the number of demand and future projections, for example, to neighboring beach destinations for vacations and destinations in Europe, in Europe we are growing a lot.

"They are like two parallel worlds, one is that of the economy and the other is that of the people who want that experience of traveling after the pandemic, and in Argentina you see the same thing."

Colombian Market

"We also remain very committed to Colombia. We have daily flights from Houston to Bogotá, we have a daily flight from Bogotá to Newark (NJ) and we also see the demand from and to Colombia and the United States. There is a very strong market because Colombia is also very large with the issue of tourism. It is closer to the United States and there are many opportunities for different types of tourism in Colombia and we also have a large business core, people who travel for business from the United States to Colombia."

"The demand in number of people and what we are seeing in projections for the first quarter of this year is that it is very good, we are very optimistic so far in the year 2023. We bet on during the pandemic and we ordered planes, Whether it's from the narrow body and also very large wide bodies, we bet and it's turned out pretty good so far."

"We work together with the airports. We have 7 important hubs in the US in 7 large connection centers in the United States, including in 4 of the most important cities in the country: Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Washington. So we're working together to improve the traveler experience, to improve the connection."

"For example, in Houston we operate more than 1,000 flights per week to Latin America to 31 countries, 60 destinations, and there we have to work together with all the security and customs people to expedite the process and we have plenty of space there. We are on the right track ".

The United app, the great investment in technology that had good results

"The investment in technology that we have made has been phenomenal and we see everything in the app that we have at United. All the flight information is at hand. If you are late for any reason, Houston gives you the options of the following flights. Luggage can be tracked (real-time tracking), seats can be assigned, you can check in. We have made a fairly large investment and we continue to improve this service that sets us apart from the competition" .