LAW - Latin American Wings (Santiago de Chile) has applied to the US Department of Transportation (DOT) for exemption authority and a foreign air carrier permit ahead of its entry into the US market.

According to papers filed with the DOT, LAW is seeking authority to operate chartered and scheduled flights ferrying persons, cargo, and mail between Chile and the United States and points that fall within the Multilateral Agreement on the Liberalization of International Air Transport (MALIAT). MALIAT is a treaty that came into effect in 2001 and offers member states' carriers access to liberal air traffic rights between the signatory states of Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, Singapore, and the United States.

As previously reported, LAW plans to serve the US using B757-200 equipment wet-leased from Icelandair (FI, Reykjavik Keflavik). The Boeing twinjet will be used to run a 2x weekly Santiago de Chile-Miami International via Caracas Simón Bolivar service from this month onwards. Once exemption authority is granted and/or an FACP, the carrier will likely shift the service to its own aircraft. Though its fleet currently consists entirely of narrowbody aircraft - four B737-300s and one Gulfstream III business jet - LAW has confirmed plans to induct its first widebody aircraft in the form of a B767-300(ER) next month. Two more of the type, understood to be ex-Air New Zealand (NZ, Auckland International) machinery, will arrive in December 2017 and January 2018 respectively.