Pe­ter Christo­pher

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

One week af­ter the dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of Vir­gin At­lantic’s con­tract for di­rect flights be­tween Lon­don and To­ba­go was an­nounced, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly is ne­go­ti­at­ing with Caribbean Air­lines to es­tab­lish new di­rect routes from Toron­to and Mi­a­mi.

Coun­cil­lor Tashia Grace Bur­ris, the THA’s Sec­re­tary of Tourism, Cul­ture, An­tiq­ui­ties and Trans­porta­tion an­nounced these plans dur­ing the THA’s ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil’s Man­date Mon­day me­dia brief­ing.

“I would like to put on pub­lic record that com­ing out of the con­ver­sa­tions with CAL we are look­ing at Caribbean Air­lines to pos­si­bly add two new in­ter­na­tion­al routes in the be­gin­ning of 2023. And ide­al­ly those routes we are tar­get­ing we would like to tar­get the Cana­di­an mar­ket which did well for us un­der the Sun­wing arrange­ment,” she said.

She said these ne­go­ti­a­tions fol­low Caribbean Air­lines’ ad­di­tion of di­rect flights from New York and Mi­a­mi for the up­com­ing To­ba­go Car­ni­val.

“For per­sons in the di­as­po­ra who have been beg­ging for di­rect flights for the Car­ni­val, Oc­to­ber 23 and Oc­to­ber 26 two flights are al­ready on the sched­ule.

“In ad­di­tion to these ad­di­tion­al JFK routes, they have al­so added a Mi­a­mi to To­ba­go di­rect. This one came as a com­plete sur­prise and again I must thank CAL.

“This was their demon­stra­tion that they be­lieve in the To­ba­go Car­ni­val prod­uct. And these two flights will al­so take place on the 23 and the 26 (Oc­to­ber) di­rect to To­ba­go and leave on No­vem­ber 1 and 3,” said Bur­ris.

She said she hoped this di­rect Mi­a­mi flight will be­come a per­ma­nent fix­ture on the sched­ule go­ing for­ward.

Bur­ris con­firmed that Con­dor Air­lines, which pre­vi­ous­ly op­er­at­ed di­rect flights from Ger­many to To­ba­go, would re­sume ser­vice to To­ba­go in the first week of No­vem­ber.

Bur­ris briefly touched on the dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of the Vir­gin con­tract, as she ex­plained that too few pas­sen­gers ac­tu­al­ly used the flight to come to To­ba­go.

“It sim­ply did not make dol­lars, it did not make cents. C -E-N-T-S and it al­so did not make sense. S-E-N-S-E. The num­bers have been bad.

“We’re not go­ing to hide that. That’s pub­lic knowl­edge. The num­bers have been bad. It would have ac­tu­al­ly been eas­i­er for us to phys­i­cal­ly buy busi­ness class or first class tick­ets for every pas­sen­ger who came off that flight di­rect­ly to To­ba­go than pay­ing for the en­tire plane which we were do­ing. The ma­jor­i­ty of the pas­sen­gers were com­ing off in Bar­ba­dos, who we shared the flight with,” she said.

She said the mon­ey saved from end­ing the con­tract has al­lowed them to pur­sue ne­go­ti­a­tions to es­tab­lish new routes.

“We are al­so look­ing at ei­ther con­tin­u­ing the Mi­a­mi di­rect to To­ba­go or look­ing at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Grena­da di­rect to To­ba­go in ad­di­tion to all the oth­ers that we are at this time pur­su­ing,” she said.