SAN­DRA CHOUTI

Low cost car­ri­er RED­jet has so far not re­spond­ed to state­ments made by Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er that he did not know where, when or how it ob­tained its ap­provals to op­er­ate in T&T, but the com­pa­ny yes­ter­day said it has got its air op­er­a­tor cer­tifi­cate from the Bar­ba­dos Civ­il Avi­a­tion De­part­ment.Even as the air­line, through its lo­cal pub­lic re­la­tions com­pa­ny, San­dra Welch-Far­rel and Com­pa­ny (SWF&CO) is­sued a state­ment about its Caribbean op­er­a­tions, it did not ad­dress the is­sue to op­er­ate in T&T.The state­ment said the air­line's ob­tain­ing its air op­er­a­tor cer­tifi­cate last Fri­day was a "ma­jor mile­stone" for the new air­line.How­ev­er, RED­jet did not re­spond to e-mailed ques­tions from the T&T Guardian ask­ing whether the air­line ap­plied to the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (CATT) for per­mis­sion to fly from Port-of-Spain.

The air­line al­so did not ad­dress ques­tions of the date of any ap­pli­ca­tion it has filed with the CATT, and on what grounds it had gone ahead with its me­dia and mar­ket­ing blitz while ques­tions were be­ing raised about the chan­nels it went through to ob­tain per­mis­sion to op­er­ate in T&T.At­tempts made yes­ter­day to speak to Ramesh Lutch­me­di­al, di­rec­tor gen­er­al of CATT, were un­suc­cess­ful. Each time the T&T Guardian called his of­fice, his sec­re­tary said he was in a meet­ing.Fol­low­ing a cer­e­mo­ny at For­res Park recre­ation ground, Clax­ton Bay, last Thurs­day, Warn­er said: "I am cu­ri­ous to know (where the air­line got per­mis­sion). I will have to ad­vise the Prime Min­is­ter. I can't ad­vise her if I don't know." In its re­lease, Kevin Dud­ley, RED­jet's chief op­er­a­tions of­fi­cer said:

"We would like to ac­knowl­edge the pro­fes­sion­al­ism and hard work of the Bar­ba­dos Civ­il Avi­a­tion De­part­ment and their col­leagues from oth­er civ­il avi­a­tion au­thor­i­ties in the re­gion for their sup­port in reach­ing this key mile­stone."The re­lease stat­ed that the air op­er­a­tor's cer­tifi­cate meant that the air­line was well on track for its May 8 launch."RED­jet has re­ceived the re­quired reg­u­la­to­ry ap­provals from the Air Trans­port Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty of Bar­ba­dos un­der the air ser­vice agree­ments be­tween Bar­ba­dos and oth­er states, in­clud­ing the air ser­vices agree­ment be­tween the rel­e­vant coun­tries, to com­mence cur­rent com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ties.

RED­jet has been ad­ver­tis­ing low­er than av­er­age rates -TT$63 -to Bar­ba­dos, Guyana and Ja­maica.In fine print, though, its mar­ket­ing states that those rates ex­clude Gov­ern­ment and sales tax­es and that base fares were sub­ject­ed to dai­ly bank rates of con­ver­sion.The air­line said it would like to clar­i­fy that it had not ap­plied to fly to any des­ti­na­tion in the Unit­ed States and cur­rent­ly had no plans to do so."Bar­ba­dos, at present, does not have the cat­e­go­ry 1 sta­tus re­quired to do so, how­ev­er, this is a mat­ter so­ley be­tween the au­thor­i­ties of Bar­ba­dos and the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion in the Unit­ed States," it said.