When Argentina threw open its airports to private operators in the late 1990s, few observers could have predicted that the winning consortium would one day compete for concessions in Iraq and Angola. Yet that is precisely where Corporación América Airports (CAA) finds itself in 2026: a company that began as an Argentine infrastructure play and has grown into one of the most active and geographically diverse airport groups in the world, currently operating 52 airports across six countries and serving 86.7 million passengers in 2025, 9.8% above 2024.

 The story of CAA is, at its core, about what happens when an operator learns its trade in genuinely difficult markets and then applies those hard-won lessons elsewhere.

In 1998, a consortium led by Eduardo Eurnekian’s Corporación América Group won the concession for Aeropuertos Argentina 2000, taking on 33 airports in a single transaction. The scale was enormous. So were the challenges: currency devaluations, sovereign defaults, and sustained macroeconomic turbulence forced the company to develop operational disciplines that most airport operators in stable markets never need. Managing airport economics through Argentine-style inflation where aeronautical charges and commercial revenues move at different speeds, in different currencies, against a shifting cost base became a competitive advantage rather than merely a burden to be absorbed.

That experience shaped CAA’s instinct for concession negotiation, regulatory management, and financial resilience. It also instilled a permanent focus on revenue per passenger as a metric that ultimately matters more than traffic volume alone.

From Argentina, the portfolio assembled methodically. Armenia followed after the December 2001 concession agreement, with Zvartnots entering the portfolio in 2002; Uruguay followed in 2003; Brazil in 2011 and 2012; the Galápagos in 2011; and Italy in 2014 through Pisa and Florence, later consolidated under Toscana Aeroporti.

In 2018, Corporación América became the first Latin American airport operator to list ordinary common shares directly on the New York Stock Exchange, under the ticker CAAP, rather than accessing U.S. capital markets through an ADR or ADS structure, a route taken by the Mexican groups before it, imposing formal governance standards and broadening access to international institutional capital.

In Peru, CAA held an indirect 50% equity interest in Kuntur Wasi, the consortium awarded the Chinchero International Airport concession near Cusco in 2014. Following the government’s 2017 termination of the concession, Kuntur Wasi and Corporación América pursued ICSID arbitration. In January 2026, Sociedad Aeroportuaria Kuntur Wasi S.A., in which CAA held an indirect 50% equity interest, received payment of US$91.2 million from the Republic of Peru pursuant to a final ICSID arbitration award issued in May 2024.

In Brazil, the Natal concession, the first airport in Brazil transferred to the private sector and the first greenfield federal airport built by the private sector, was exited through a negotiated friendly termination in 2024, with CAA’s subsidiary ICASGA receiving a gross indemnification payment of R$610.4 million.

What distinguishes CAA’s history is not the absence of setbacks but the consistency of its response: negotiate, litigate where necessary, recover value, and pursue the next opportunity.