Ive been doing some more information hunting, and the more I hear about Andes the more Im convinced it may be better to avoid this carrier. Im told they have only 1 airplane in their fleet, and are prone to frequent operational issues. Whats more here is how they handle their problems, as described by a poster over on TripAdvisor:
I just returned from Salta a few weeks ago but still didn't have time to post a detailed trip report as I've been very busy. I flew Andes and it was really ...well BAD.
The planes don't have much legroom. To make matters worse, on the flight home, I was supposed to leave at 8 AM. Long story short, I didn't leave until 11 PM that night. My travel agent was good enough to call me the night before at 11 PM and let me know that the flight was cancelled for the morning. The following day they didn't know what time the flight would be confirmed so I waited all afternoon and finally heard at 4 PM that the flight would leave at 6 PM. It didn't end up leaving until 11 PM.
Then imagine my surprised when the flight I thought I had with "Andes Airlines" wasn't with Andes. I think they subcontracted the flight out with an airline (that I believe is State owned but not 100% sure). It was called LADE. It was quite possibly the worst plane I ever flew in my life and I've pretty much been everywhere. I thought the planes were bad in Cuba but this was the worst.
It was very small, the air was stuffy and smelled horrible in the plane, the tray tables were broken so kept coming down during the flight, there were no overhead bin doors so things were falling out (talk about a safety concern!!). To make it worse, they inform us after take off at 11 PM that they didn't have any fuel so they needed to go to Tucuman to fuel!
Then to add insult to injury, there was a medical emergency as some senior citizen had trouble breathing so we didn't make it to Buenos Aires until about 2 AM.
I will never fly with Andes/LADE again and I wouldn't recommend LADE.
So, NO, I wouldn't recommend Andes...... I generally try to avoid Aerolineas Argentina as they are the worst but they were heaven compared to Andes.... I guess sometimes you get what you pay for.
I think the last line of the above comment is the most important... yes, Andes is cheap, but sometimes a cheap ticket can become very expensive.