Lufthansa to suspend flights to Venezuela

The German airline, Luf­thansa, has announced that it will suspend flights to Venezuela from 18 June due to economic diffi­culties in the country.
The company also said cur­rency controls in Venezue­la made it impossible for air­lines to convert their earnings into dollars and send the mon­ey abroad.
Venezuela’s economy has been hit hard by a sharp drop in the price of oil - the coun­try’s main source of income.

Venezuela has high inflation and severe shortages of basic goods.
In a statement, Lufthansa said that it “will be forced to suspend our service between Caracas and Frankfurt as of 18 June”.
It noted that the demand for international flights to Vene­zuela had dropped in 2015 and in the first quarter of the cur­rent year.
However, it said it hoped to restore services in the near fu­ture.
Strict currency controls were first imposed in Vene­zuela in 2003 by late President Hugo Chavez.
The restrictions were fur­ther tightened two years ago, forcing several airlines to re­duce their operations in the country as they struggled to repatriate billions of dollars in revenue held in the local cur­rency - the bolivar.