Aerolíneas Argentinas Is Launching Its First-Ever Flights to Curaçao

The Dutch Caribbean has quietly become one of the region’s biggest success stories in attracting travelers from South America. Geography certainly helps: Aruba and Curaçao sit just off the coast of Venezuela, significantly closer to much of northern South America than most Caribbean destinations. But proximity is only part of it.

Both islands have made a concerted push to court South American travelers, developing airline relationships, marketing in key source markets and building an increasingly broad network of flights from the continent.

Now Curaçao is adding another major piece to that network: its first-ever service from Aerolíneas Argentinas.

The Argentine flag carrier will launch flights between Buenos Aires and Curaçao beginning Jan. 2, 2027, with four flights each week through March 29, according to the Curaçao Tourist Board.

Two of the weekly flights will operate nonstop, while the other two will travel via neighboring Aruba.

The nonstop flights will operate on Wednesdays and Saturdays, while the flights via Aruba will run on Mondays and Thursdays.

It’s an important new connection for an island that has been seeing record-breaking tourism growth this year — and Argentina has emerged as one of the fastest-growing pieces of that expansion.

Curaçao welcomed 23,924 stayover visitors from Argentina between January and July 2026, a 79 percent increase compared to the same period in 2025.

The growth accelerated again in July, when 4,862 Argentine travelers visited Curaçao, up from 2,885 in July 2025 — an increase of 69 percent.

Those numbers help explain why Aerolíneas Argentinas is entering the market. This isn’t a new route designed to create Argentine demand from scratch. It is adding capacity to a market where Curaçao has already been seeing rapid growth.

The Dutch Caribbean’s South America Push

Aruba and Curaçao have increasingly been at the forefront of the Caribbean’s efforts to draw travelers from South America.

Their location gives them a natural advantage, particularly for travelers from Colombia and Venezuela, but the two islands have expanded well beyond their nearest neighbors.

Curaçao has been steadily broadening its reach across the continent, including new service from Peru. LATAM recently added flights between Lima and Curaçao, opening another gateway to the island and connections from across LATAM’s South American network.

The carrier has also expanded Curaçao access from Colombia, including service between Bogotá and Curaçao.

Argentina is becoming an increasingly important part of that strategy.

The new Aerolíneas Argentinas flights are particularly notable because the schedule itself connects the two Dutch Caribbean destinations. On Mondays and Thursdays, the Buenos Aires service will travel first to Aruba and then continue to Curaçao, while the Wednesday and Saturday flights will operate directly between Buenos Aires and Curaçao.

That puts both islands into the same Argentina-Caribbean air corridor during the winter season.

And it comes as South America is playing an increasingly important role in Curaçao’s tourism mix.

During the first half of 2026, Argentina accounted for 19,062 stayover visitors to Curaçao, while Brazil sent 20,488 and Colombia contributed 28,817.

Those are significant numbers for an island that historically relied heavily on the Netherlands and other European markets and has more recently seen rapid growth from the United States and Canada.

The South American push gives Curaçao another source of visitors and makes its tourism base considerably more geographically diverse.

For Argentine travelers, the new flights provide easier access to Willemstad, Curaçao’s beaches and an expanding hotel sector that ranges from large beachfront resorts to boutique hotels and villas across Pietermaai, Jan Thiel and the island’s western coast.

For Curaçao, the route is another sign that its South America strategy is gaining traction.

The island welcomed more than 437,000 stayover visitors in the first six months of 2026, the strongest first half in its history and the first time Curaçao surpassed 400,000 stayover arrivals during that period.

Now one of its fastest-growing source markets is getting something it has never had before: flights on Argentina’s national carrier.

And for the Dutch Caribbean more broadly, it’s another example of Aruba and Curaçao turning their location at the southern edge of the Caribbean into a much larger tourism advantage.

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