It's no surprise that the relationship between LIAT and Caribbean Airlines (CAL) continues to sour. The two carriers have had a long-standing, quietly adversarial relationship over the decades as they joust for the region's inter-island transport business. Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, suggested that CAL might be undermining the trade and competitive terms of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas and the Common Air Services Agreement in Caricom. In making these accusations, Gonsalves spoke in his capacity as the chairman of the shareholder governments of LIAT, but hearing these concerns from one of the region's leaders points to some of the issues that CAL will have to engage in its push to increase profitability and market share.
The airline operates now in a very different environment than the one that its predecessor company, BWIA, enjoyed. Air travel is no longer the romantic notion it was in BWIA's heyday, travelling on an aircraft is more airlift than adventure and in the post 9/11 world, practicalities have replaced passion in the narrative of airline advertising. Within the Caribbean region alone, the rivalry between LIAT and CAL has been expanded by a third party, REDJet, which has chosen a no-frills business model as its selling proposition in carving its space as an air travel provider operating within the region. REDJet, for its part, has accused CAL of deceptive advertising as the incumbent airline seeks to meet the challenge of the low-cost startup in customer minds.
CAL itself is not the airline it was at its startup, having merged its operations with Air Jamaica to create a carrier that has key experience and assets at the north and south ends of the Caribbean archipelago. Last Friday's press conference spoke to none of these matters directly, but they are issues that will increasingly play a critical role in how CAL chooses to define itself within the region and in international markets. Increasingly, this will be a choice between being a full service provider and a no-frills carrier.
The key announcement for CAL was the decision to keep the domestic airbridge at Arthur NR Robinson International Airport in Tobago open on a 24-hour basis. CAL will now offer a red-eye service between both islands with flights departing Tobago at 11.30 pm and 1.30 am. The new service did not escape critical comment. THA tourism consultant Neil Wilson argued that previous efforts at providing the late night service had proved to be uneconomical.
According to Wilson, Transport Minister Devant Maharaj can reference a documented example to use as a benchmark for this new attempt at instituting an overnight service at the airport. The first effort was described as resulting in an average of 2.53 passengers per flight from Tobago and 12 passengers per flight coming in from Trinidad, numbers that made sustaining the service unfeasible. The situation may be different now, and the new service will be addressing different needs for the airbridge, but the need to have a meaningful liaison with the Tobago House of Assembly on the potential of the expanded service for expanding and enhancing the business and tourism potential of Tobago seems critical in the face of the failure of an earlier effort.
Caribbean Airlines cannot make the mistake of thinking that it is solely in the airlift business if it is to define itself as the go-to player in regional air services. When Virgin Atlantic Airlines began its services to Tobago, the company identified complementary hotels and crafted a strategy for its services to passengers that extended its brand into the best assets that the island could offer. CAL must engage with its customers to ensure that its new red-eye service meets the needs of its customers in a similar way. It would be a terrible mistake for the airline to simply institute the flights and leave the service to fend for itself. Increasingly, it will find that its success as an airline will depend on its capacity to build end to end experiences by recommending services, offering incentive packages and engaging customers with authority on all its destinations.