Business & Economics
Venezuela Pulls Permits for Six Foreign Airlines After U.S. NOTAM-Triggered Flight Suspensions
On 26-27 Nov 2025 Caracas revoked the operating rights of Iberia, TAP, Avianca, LATAM, GOL and Turkish Airlines after the carriers ignored a 48-hour ultimatum to restore routes they had halted following a 21 Nov FAA security warning tied to a U.S. military build-up off Venezuela.
Focusing Facts
- FAA NOTAM KICZ A0053/25 issued 21 Nov 2025 advises caution in the Maiquetía FIR for 90 days because of “worsened security situation & heightened military activity.”
- Since Aug 2025 the U.S. has deployed the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier group, guided-missile destroyers and roughly 15,000 troops to the Caribbean, conducting 22 boat strikes that killed 83 people.
- AVAVIT estimates >8,000 ticketed passengers affected across at least 40 flights after the six airlines suspended service.
Context
Airspace has long been a proxy battleground: Washington grounded Panamanian carrier COPA weeks before the 1989 invasion, and the U.N. imposed a no-fly embargo on Libya in 1992; both preluded or reinforced coercive strategies without a formal declaration of war. Venezuela’s retaliatory ban signals the sharpening use of civilian connectivity as leverage—mirroring a century-old pattern in which control of Caribbean sea- and skylanes under the Monroe Doctrine underpins U.S. power projection, while smaller states seek nationalist capital by rejecting foreign carriers. The episode also highlights a broader trend: commercial airlines are increasingly risk-averse, treating geopolitical NOTAMs like automated circuit-breakers, effectively outsourcing foreign policy to insurance actuaries. On a 100-year horizon the lasting significance may be less the temporary passenger chaos than the normalization of extraterritorial security advisories (by the FAA or others) that can de-facto police another nation’s airspace, eroding the Westphalian notion of sovereign skies first codified in the 1919 Paris Convention.
Perspectives
Left-leaning / anti-US intervention outlets
e.g., Counter Punch, DT News — They depict the airline suspensions and Caracas’s retaliation as fallout from an aggressive, evidence-free U.S. military build-up that is killing civilians and seeking regime change, so Venezuela’s stance is framed as defensive. Hostility toward U.S. foreign policy may lead these outlets to underplay questions about Maduro’s legitimacy or the travel disruption while spotlighting every alleged U.S. abuse.
Mainstream international news outlets
wire-service stories in regional papers such as The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, Al Jazeera Online — They characterise Caracas’s revocation of permits as a “disproportionate” punishment of airlines that simply obeyed an FAA security alert, stressing the chaos for thousands of stranded travellers. Heavy reliance on Western officials and the FAA framing may downplay the scale of U.S. military activity and accept Washington’s anti-narcotics rationale largely at face value.
Aviation-industry focused sources
IATA statement and travel press like TheTravel, Mirage News — The narrative centres on passenger safety and operational risk, urging Venezuela to reinstate permits and highlighting that carriers paused service only after official safety advisories. Because the industry’s revenues depend on restoring routes, coverage steers the conversation toward technical safety concerns and away from the underlying geopolitical confrontation.