Bolivia’s troubled flag carrier bets on a single jet to stabilise crisis

Boliviana de Aviación (BoA), the country’s struggling state airline, marked a rare moment of relief this weekend with the arrival of a leased Boeing 767-300ER—an aircraft officials describe as the first concrete step toward stabilising an operation on the brink.

The wide-body jet touched down at Santa Cruz’s Viru Viru Airport late Saturday night, its landing greeted not with ceremony but with urgency. For weeks, BoA has faced mounting delays, stranded passengers, and a public increasingly frustrated by an airline operating with barely half its fleet.

Just days earlier, newly appointed general manager Capt. Juan José Galvarro had acknowledged the scale of the crisis in a candid address from Cochabamba: only 10 of BoA’s 20 aircraft were airworthy, far short of the 13 needed to maintain even a minimal schedule. The airline is also weighed down by a deficit of Bs 215 million and debts exceeding $37 million.

“We are working to stabilise operations,” Galvarro told passengers, vowing that the embattled carrier would not be privatised and promising a slow but visible improvement in punctuality and service.

That promise is now, in part, pinned to the leased 767.

According to Public Works Minister Mauricio Zamora, the aircraft’s arrival averts an immediate operational collapse. Without it, he said, BoA would have been forced to cancel flights for up to 9,000 passengers and refund $1.1 million for tickets sold in advance by the previous administration.

“This is an immediate solution,” Zamora said, adding that the move was coordinated directly with President Rodrigo Paz. “If the plane didn’t arrive, thousands would not have been able to travel.”

The aircraft, equipped for 232 passengers and certified for long-haul operations, began flying the Santa Cruz–Miami route on Sunday—one of BoA’s most commercially vital corridors and one of the most affected by recent disruptions.

Officials stressed that the 767 is a temporary lease, a stopgap while other grounded aircraft undergo recovery and maintenance. Zamora also accused the previous administration of leaving behind an “unrealistic flight schedule” that worsened operational strain.

For BoA’s customers—many of whom spent recent weeks sleeping in terminals or scrambling for rebookings—the new aircraft offers a glimmer of stability after months of turbulence.

Whether it marks the start of a turnaround or merely a brief reprieve will depend on how quickly BoA can bring the rest of its fleet back into the skies. For now, one jet is carrying the weight of an entire airline’s hopes.