De­spite threats by LI­AT to sue Caribbean Air­lines Ltd (CAL) over al­le­ga­tions of un­fair com­pe­ti­tion, Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj says CAL would con­tin­ue to ser­vice the East­ern Caribbean ag­gres­sive­ly. "We see CAL as hav­ing a piv­otal role in the de­vel­op­ment of T&T's tourism and it would con­tin­ue to ag­gres­sive­ly pur­sue mar­kets in all ter­ri­to­ries in the East­ern Caribbean." Ma­haraj said he felt the mar­ket is cur­rent­ly not be­ing ser­viced prop­er­ly and CAL, which he de­scribed as the "Caribbean's num­ber one air­line," would con­tin­ue to ex­pand its mar­kets in the re­gion. Ma­haraj, who was speak­ing yes­ter­day at a CAL new con­fer­ence held at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, said he was not will­ing to com­ment fur­ther on the mat­ter. "Giv­en the threat of lit­i­ga­tion, I don't think it would be pru­dent to com­ment on that at this point in time. I await what­ev­er pre-ac­tion let­ter that would be served and then we would re­spond." He said he was not de­pend­ing sole­ly on news­pa­per re­ports and is wait­ing to of­fi­cial­ly hear from LI­AT.

Last week Ralph Gon­salves, Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines and chair­man of the share­hold­er gov­ern­ments of LI­AT, said the air­line's own­ers felt CAL was un­der­min­ing the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas as well as the Com­mon Air Ser­vices Agree­ment in Cari­com by en­gag­ing in un­fair com­pe­ti­tion. Gon­salves said no one can stop CAL or wants to stop CAL, but share­hold­er gov­ern­ments of LI­AT would like to have a lev­el play­ing field and fair com­pe­ti­tion.

Asked if CAL was in breach of any Cari­com or Ch­aguara­mas treaty law, Ma­haraj said, "I shud­der to think that any board un­der my re­mit would breach any law and that in­cludes CAL." Pri­or to this ac­cu­sa­tion, CAL came un­der more fire by the low-cost air­line RED­jet, which ac­cused CAL of de­cep­tive ad­ver­tis­ing. This was quick­ly dis­missed by Ma­haraj, who said RED­jet was look­ing for free ad­ver­tis­ing and was not in a po­si­tion to prop­er­ly com­ment on de­cep­tive ad­ver­tis­ing, be­cause many of RED­jet's flights were re­cent­ly can­celled. Jok­ing­ly, Ma­haraj said "CAL is an air­line, but RED­jet is just about two planes."

24-hour ANR Air­port

Mean­while, Ma­haraj said the con­fer­ence was to an­nounce CAL's "red eye" flights be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go, its non-stop dai­ly ser­vice to George FL Charles in­ter­na­tion­al aiport in St Lu­cia, and the of­fi­cial open­ing of the 24-hour ser­vice of ANR Robin­son air­port, To­ba­go. He said the ad­di­tion­al four new flights be­tween T&T were to fa­cil­i­tate the 24-hour ser­vice at the To­ba­go air­port. He said the red eye ser­vices would al­low cus­tomers full 24-hour day trips to fa­cil­i­tate busi­ness and leisure. These flights would now take the to­tal num­ber of week­ly flights on the air­bridge to 252. CAL chair­man George Nicholas III point­ed out that these To­ba­go flights would serve as con­nect­ing flights from Unit­ed States to avoid pas­sen­gers hav­ing to overnight. CAL would be re­ceiv­ing an­oth­er ATR air­craft in four days. Robert Cor­bie, act­ing chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer at CAL, said the air­line is on stream to ful­fil the ex­pec­ta­tion of trans­port­ing 220,000 pas­sen­gers for Car­ni­val. "This num­ber is across the board for the en­tire Car­ni­val sea­son," he said. "We are ex­pect­ed to have a 747 air­craft ar­riv­ing to­day, which would be kept for about two weeks." Mi­nor­i­ty leader Ash­worth Jack praised CAL and the min­is­ter for their quick re­sponse to the call to make the ANR Robin­son air­port a 24-hour ser­vice, and to add flights be­tween T&T. He said this would give To­ba­go the much-need­ed boost to make it more at­trac­tive for tourists. He asked Nicholas if CAL could al­so con­sid­er ad­di­tion­al flights be­tween Bar­ba­dos and To­ba­go, Lon­don and To­ba­go, and New York and To­ba­go.