Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Af­ter com­plaints about the late ad­di­tion of flights for East­er, the THA Di­vi­sion of Tourism and Caribbean Air­lines met on April 1 to dis­cuss air­lift for peak pe­ri­ods, with par­tic­u­lar em­pha­sis on the To­ba­go Car­ni­val, sched­uled for Oc­to­ber 30 to No­vem­ber 1.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, the di­vi­sion said a high-lev­el meet­ing was held at its Sang­ster’s Hill of­fice, as part of on­go­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­forts to strength­en air con­nec­tiv­i­ty and im­prove re­li­a­bil­i­ty across the do­mes­tic and re­gion­al net­work.

The di­vi­sion de­scribed the meet­ing as time­ly fol­low­ing chal­lenges af­fect­ing the do­mes­tic air­bridge.

To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Regi­nald Mac Lean and oth­er stake­hold­ers have com­plained about los­ing busi­ness be­cause clients were un­able to se­cure con­firmed tick­ets to the is­land.

The di­vi­sion said, “Op­por­tu­ni­ties were al­so ex­plored to ac­com­mo­date in­creased vis­i­tor de­mand through tar­get­ed ini­tia­tives such as va­ca­tion pack­ages, char­ter ser­vices and po­ten­tial re­fine­ment of the in­ter­na­tion­al sched­ules. How­ev­er, the air­line em­pha­sised all pro­pos­als must be com­mer­cial­ly vi­able.”

Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk ex­clu­sive­ly re­port­ed CAL was re­quest­ing a bailout from the Gov­ern­ment. It comes at a time when the US/Is­rael-Iran war has caused the cost of jet fu­el to sky­rock­et. Aside from the bailout, CAL is propos­ing that the sub­sidy on the air­bridge be re­moved and some of its low-rev­enue routes be can­celled.

With re­gards to the meet­ing, the Tourism Di­vi­sion said it want­ed to en­sure that pro­posed ad­just­ments re­main sen­si­tive to the needs of res­i­dents who re­ly heav­i­ly on the do­mes­tic air­bridge for ac­cess to es­sen­tial ser­vice.

It said both par­ties shared per­spec­tives on the com­plex­i­ties of air­lift eco­nom­ics, recog­nis­ing that sus­tain­abil­i­ty must be bal­anced with na­tion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

At­ten­tion was al­so giv­en to fu­ture op­por­tu­ni­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly the ex­plo­ration of a di­rect Toron­to route un­der a prospec­tive Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing.

The di­vi­sion said this po­ten­tial de­vel­op­ment is seen as a strate­gic step in ex­pand­ing To­ba­go’s reach in­to a high-val­ue mar­ket while strength­en­ing di­as­po­ra con­nec­tions.

“Dis­cus­sions cen­tred on fea­si­bil­i­ty, de­mand con­sid­er­a­tions and the frame­work re­quired to sup­port such a route in a way that is both com­mer­cial­ly vi­able and ben­e­fi­cial to To­ba­go’s tourism sec­tor.”

Tourism Sec­re­tary Zor­isha Hack­ett said, “To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­ment is in­ex­tri­ca­bly linked to the strength and re­li­a­bil­i­ty of its air­lift. As we ex­plore new op­por­tu­ni­ties for ex­pan­sion, we must be equal­ly de­lib­er­ate in ad­dress­ing the long­stand­ing is­sues af­fect­ing the do­mes­tic air­bridge. Our pri­or­i­ty is to en­sure that To­bag­o­ni­ans are not dis­ad­van­taged, even as we work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with our part­ners to nav­i­gate the fi­nan­cial and op­er­a­tional re­al­i­ties of the in­dus­try.”

CAL’s act­ing CEO, Nir­mala Ra­mai, said the air­line re­mains com­mit­ted to work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with na­tion­al stake­hold­ers to en­hance con­nec­tiv­i­ty while en­sur­ing op­er­a­tional sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Oth­er of­fi­cials at the meet­ing in­clud­ed As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary of Tourism Nike­ta Per­cy, Tourism Ad­min­is­tra­tor Shelly Trim, and Tourism Tech­ni­cal Ad­vi­sor Ko­rice Nan­cis, To­ba­go Tourism Agency Lim­it­ed (TTAL) chair Abena Richards, TTAL CEO San­dra Orr-Toney, CAL act­ing Chief Fi­nan­cial Of­fi­cer Neera Ra­mai, CAL Ex­ec­u­tive Man­ag­er for Air­ports and Ground Op­er­a­tions Brent Gas­pard, CAL Man­ag­er of Rev­enue Man­age­ment Ran­dall Hen­rique, and CAL Sales Ex­ec­u­tive Janelle Gan­goo.