Andes Lineas Aereas of Salta, Argentina recently contracted with Argentina's #1 student travel company, Travel Rock, to fly student charters from many secondary Argentine airports to the student / ski / lakes resort of Bariloche, located in the Patagonia region near the Chilean border.
Bariloche annually draws thousands of Argentine graduating high school students, most of whom take very long bus rides, such as 20-24 hours from Buenos Aires, to arrive at the resort. To alleviate the situation and make Bariloche tour packages more attractive, Travel Rock is offering students nonstop charter flights on Andes MD-80's from secondary Argentine cities, such as Cordoba (COR), Iguazu (IGR), La Rioja (IRJ), Mar del Plata (MDQ), Posadas (PSS), Rio Cuarto (RCU), Rosario (ROS), Salta (SLA), Santiago del Estero (SDE) and others for an average 500 peso surcharge (US$ 55 at the official exchange rate) over ordinary charter bus travel to Bariloche. The charters started in July and are due to operate through the rest of the year.
To celebrate and publicize this new service, on August 10 Andes rolled out its MD-83 LV-WGM (c/n 49784/1627) painted with billboard Travel Rock titles on the fuselage topped by "The largest company of graduate travel in the world" in Spanish in small cursive letters plus company logos on the tail and near the nose. These photos by Rafael Reca and published in the Argentine aviation blog Linea ALA detail the new logojet scheme:
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