Ma­jor­i­ty State-owned Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) has added over 4,000 seats over the past two weeks ahead of the up­com­ing To­ba­go Car­ni­val.

In a news re­lease on Tues­day, the air­line con­firmed that it had in­creased flights be­tween the is­lands with 42 ad­di­tion­al ser­vices from Oc­to­ber 18 and 31, of­fer­ing a fur­ther 4,144 seats to fly be­tween Port-of-Spain and To­ba­go and vice ver­sa for the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od.

CAL al­so said as the of­fi­cial air­line of To­ba­go Car­ni­val 2023 it will, in part­ner­ship with the To­ba­go Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (TCC), host a Car­ni­val Wel­come Home ac­ti­va­tion to wel­come vis­i­tors at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, To­ba­go, to­mor­row.

“Ar­riv­ing pas­sen­gers will be treat­ed to a spe­cial cel­e­bra­tion of tra­di­tion­al To­ba­go cul­ture and cre­ativ­i­ty with mu­sic, live en­ter­tain­ment and cos­tumed mas­quer­aders.”

The air­line is al­so a con­tribut­ing spon­sor of sev­er­al sig­na­ture events over the course of To­ba­go Car­ni­val in­clud­ing So­ca Monarch, Rox­G­lo, Pan and Pow­der and the Pa­rade of the Bands.

CAL al­so col­lab­o­rat­ed with PanTrin­ba­go and spon­sored sev­er­al lo­cal bands com­pet­ing at Pan and Pow­der.

CAL chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Garvin Med­era, said, “Caribbean Air­lines is hap­py to be the of­fi­cial air­line for To­ba­go Car­ni­val and we are poised to wel­come both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors, to the is­land. The air­bridge is a sig­nif­i­cant part of our op­er­a­tions and this part­ner­ship with the To­ba­go Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion and oth­er stake­hold­ers, is key to show­cas­ing To­ba­go’s car­ni­val to the world.”

Ali­cia Ed­wards, ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the To­ba­go Tourism Agency Ltd (TTAL) said she was pleased with the air­lines’ in­volve­ment.

“TTAL is thrilled to part­ner with Caribbean Air­lines for this cel­e­bra­to­ry ac­ti­va­tion, en­sur­ing To­ba­go’s vi­brant cul­ture and warm hos­pi­tal­i­ty greets vis­i­tors from touch­down. We wel­come the in­creased ca­pac­i­ty re­flect­ing the air­line’s com­mit­ment to seam­less trav­el dur­ing this fes­tive week and will con­tin­ue col­lab­o­rat­ing with key sec­tor part­ners to cre­ate a sus­tain­able, com­pet­i­tive, and ac­ces­si­ble des­ti­na­tion en­sur­ing To­ba­go’s tourism suc­cess be­yond To­ba­go Car­ni­val.”

On Tues­day, Tashia Bur­ris, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s sec­re­tary of Tourism, Cul­ture, An­tiq­ui­ties and Trans­porta­tion ex­pressed dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the num­ber of seats CAL added in Oc­to­ber to sat­is­fy the de­mand for peo­ple want­i­ng to at­tend the fes­tiv­i­ties.

Re­spond­ing to a ques­tion at a news con­fer­ence at the Shaw Park Cul­tur­al Com­plex, Bur­ris said sev­er­al months ago, band­lead­ers reached out to CAL for ad­di­tion­al air­lift for the car­ni­val, and ad­di­tion­al flights were added about two weeks ago.

“But the re­al­i­ty is that we don’t get enough to sup­ply the de­mand that peo­ple have for the des­ti­na­tion,” Bur­ris said.

She ac­knowl­edged that CAL is a busi­ness and does not re­gard To­ba­go as one of its more prof­itable routes.

“That’s fine. It means that there is room for oth­er per­sons, there is room for oth­er op­er­a­tors, and it’s time for us to have those types of con­ver­sa­tions.”

Bur­ris said while the THA is hap­py for what it is get­ting by way of flights, es­pe­cial­ly aris­ing out of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic...

“We know that there is more we can get, be­cause cer­tain­ly the plan is to get back to what our pre-COVID num­ber of flights were,” said Bur­ris in a re­port on the To­ba­go Car­ni­val web­site.

To­ba­go Car­ni­val runs from Oc­to­ber 27 to Oc­to­ber 29.