The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected Argentina’s appeal Tuesday and left the lower court’s ruling in force, allowing Titan Consortium to continue legal proceedings in the United States to enforce the award. The decision does not require immediate payment, but it strengthens Titan’s position in the enforcement process.

The award traces back to the 2008 nationalization of Aerolíneas Argentinas and Austral, which until then had been owned by the Spanish Marsans Group, during the presidency of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. The former owners challenged the compensation they received and brought the case before the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), a World Bank Group institution.

In 2017, the ICSID arbitration tribunal ruled in favor of Marsans and awarded $320 million in compensation, which later increased to $390.9 million with accrued interest. The Spanish company never collected the compensation. It assigned its rights under the award to Burford Capital, a British litigation finance firm, which subsequently transferred the claim to Titan Consortium, the current claimant.

Because ICSID arbitration awards cannot be enforced automatically, Titan initiated proceedings in U.S. courts to obtain judicial recognition of the award and pursue Argentine assets that could eventually be used to satisfy the debt. The appeals court’s ruling allows that process to continue.

Analyst Sebastián Maril, director of Latam Advisors, said the court rejected Argentina’s appeal, letting Titan carry on with enforcement in the United States. In a post on X, Maril said the decision also revives another case involving Argentina, known as the Webuild case, which had been stayed pending resolution of the Aerolíneas Argentinas appeal.

Argentina’s Treasury Attorney General’s Office, the agency responsible for the state’s legal defense, said in a statement cited by La Nación that it is analyzing the legal options available to try to overturn the decision or mitigate its consequences. The agency said the litigation “is the result of decisions made nearly two decades ago” and is part of the legal cases inherited by the current administration.

Sources at Aerolíneas Argentinas told Infobae that the lawsuit is not directed at the airline, but rather at the Argentine state, as the litigation concerns only the manner in which the expropriation was carried out and not the airline’s current operations.

The ruling comes as the government of President Javier Milei pursues a strategy to improve Aerolíneas Argentinas’ finances with the goal of moving toward a possible privatization. According to data published by Infobae, the airline reported an operating profit of $112.7 million in 2025 and completed its second consecutive year without receiving funding from the National Treasury. The company attributed the improvement to a cost-cutting process, the closure of unprofitable routes and an operational restructuring. Any privatization will require congressional approval, and the government failed to include Aerolíneas Argentinas among the companies subject to privatization during debate over the Ley Bases reform package.