ROUTE UPDATES: Aerolineas Argentinas' Cordoba (COR) - Miami (MIA) service discontinued for 5th time since 1979

Aerolineas Argentinas A330-223, LV-FNI (c/n 290), is the aircraft from the airline's fleet that operated the fewest number of the total 141 flights between Cordoba (COR) and Miami (MIA), only 4 legs.  (Phil Perry Collection)

Aerolineas Argentinas' Cordoba (COR) - Miami (MIA) flights, which started on 04Jul15, were recently discontinued with the last flight departing Cordoba (COR) on 29May16.  This was the fifth time that service between the two cities was attempted but abandoned since 1979, once again leaving Buenos Aires Ezeiza (EZE) as the only Argentine airport with nonstop flights to the United States.

The service operated 2x/weekly on Saturdays and Sundays with the aircraft operating the flights departing Buenos Aires Ezeiza (EZE) early on Saturday morning on a ferry flight to Cordoba (COR) where they departed in the late morning to Miami (MIA) arriving there in the early evening.  Once in Florida, they turned around to fly back to Cordoba (COR) overnight arriving back in Argentina on Sunday morning where it started the same circuit again, finally ending with a ferry flight from Cordoba (COR) to Buenos Aires Ezeiza (EZE) on Monday morning.       

A total of 141 sectors was flown between the two cities during the 11 months of operations with A340-300's operating 109 of the flights and A330-200's the remaining 32 legs (for full details on the number of sectors flown by each of the aircraft in Aerolineas' long-haul fleet, see the link below "Sources" at the bottom of this posting).  

Passenger loads ranged from a low of 88 travelers on the last Cordoba (COR) - Miami (MIA) leg, which was to be expected given that it was an "orphan" leg with no corresponding return to Cordoba (COR).  The largest number of passengers was on the very first flight from Cordoba to Miami (MIA) on 04Jul15 with 292 people on board.  

In all, there were 15 flights with more than 250 passengers aboard and the average load of all the flights was over 200 travelers.  However, Aviacion News claimed that the load factor was below 70% and there was very little high yield traffic in Business Class.    

Only a few of the Ezeiza (EZE) - Cordoba (COR) - Ezeiza (EZE) legs were open for public sale, which meant that nearly all such flights were a "dead" operating cost burden to the overall profitability of the route. 

In the opinion of the editor of this blog, the repeated failures of the Cordoba (COR) - Miami (MIA) service have been mostly due to its having been operated as a point-to-point route, with no feed to other flights on either end, a situation which would be much different with American Airlines flying the route feeding into its massive Miami (MIA) hub with connections to approx. 100 destinations in the United States.             

Sources:

http://aeropuertocordoba.blogspot.com.ar/2016/05/cordoba-se-quedo-sin-vuelos-miami.html
http://aeropuertocordoba.blogspot.com.ar/2016/04/cordoba-se-queda-sin-vuelos-miami.html
http://www.siscoma.com.ar/online/aviacion/2016/avn160407/avn-160407.html