There is con­fir­ma­tion from in­ter­Caribbean Air­ways that it has ap­plied with T&T’s Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty to op­er­ate a sched­uled ser­vice in this coun­try. 

In­ter­Caribbean Air­ways chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Trevor Sadler, gave an up­date to jour­nal­ists last month at a news con­fer­ence at the Caribbean Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (CHTA) Mar­ket­place in Mon­tego Bay, Ja­maica. 

When asked about the date that the ap­pli­ca­tion was filed, Sadler said he did not have that in­for­ma­tion at his dis­pos­al. 

This means if in­ter­Caribbean Air­ways en­ters the T&T mar­ket it will chal­lenge the dom­i­nance of Caribbean Air­lines (CAL), the na­tion­al car­ri­er joint­ly owned by the gov­ern­ments of T&T and Ja­maica.  

A Busi­ness Guardian ar­ti­cle on May 6 said the Turks and Caicos-based air­line hopes to op­er­ate a Bar­ba­dos-Port-of-Spain route for Win­ter 2024. 

CAL is cur­rent­ly ex­pand­ing its route net­work which in­cludes des­ti­na­tions such as New York City, Toron­to, Ja­maica, Trinidad, Bar­ba­dos, Cara­cas, Suri­name, and Guyana. 

Last month, the air­line an­nounced plans to start op­er­at­ing flights to Puer­to Ri­co from Trinidad to Puer­to Ri­co, via Bar­ba­dos. 

CAL is plan­ning to bring in more Boe­ing 737 Max 8s, ATR 72-600s and in­tro­duce Em­braer E175s to ser­vice routes in the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca, ac­cord­ing to the Busi­ness Guardian ar­ti­cle last month. 

In re­cent months in­ter­Caribbean has faced crit­i­cism for its de­lays and staff at­ti­tude to cus­tomers who query about their flight sta­tus.  

Asked whether the air­line can han­dle a new route since it is prone to chal­lenges on its ex­ist­ing route net­work that spans from Turks and Caicos to Guyana, Sadler said that in­ter­Caribbean has been work­ing to ad­dress the short­falls and make their prod­uct top-class prod­uct. 

The CEO high­light­ed what the air­line did last De­cem­ber to al­le­vi­ate the chal­lenges to the com­pa­ny and cus­tomers posed by ex­ter­nal ground staff in Bar­ba­dos. 

“We spent US$750,000 on equip­ment that we brought in. We hired 53 peo­ple to come in and join us in Bar­ba­dos and be­gin the jour­ney where we owned the re­la­tion­ship as op­posed to sim­ply al­low­ing a han­dling com­pa­ny who has a vary­ing de­gree of in­ter­est in our in­ter­est,” he out­lined. 

“We spent a lot of time train­ing peo­ple. We used the fa­cil­i­ties of the Uni­ver­si­ty of West In­dies to do this. We brought in all of our most knowl­edge­able peo­ple to make sure that the folks we put in front of the cus­tomers are the folks that make it through the train­ing.” 

“So we took on board folks from Bar­ba­dos who want­ed to work, who want­ed to make a dif­fer­ence, and con­stant­ly they do. So I would ad­mit we had a prob­lem last year, but that’s be­hind us.” Sadler de­tailed. 

He in­di­cat­ed that the air­line sought to ac­quire more planes and staff to meet the de­mands of cus­tomers and re­tire aged air­craft which can pose chal­lenges to the ser­vice that in­ter­Caribbean pro­vides. 

Sadler not­ed chal­lenges in the air­line in­dus­try, com­pa­nies may not have a plane or crew at a par­tic­u­lar des­ti­na­tion to pre­vent dis­rup­tion and de­lays to pas­sen­gers. 

The air­line’s CEO is mak­ing a plea for re­gion­al gov­ern­ments to cut air­line tax­es to en­cour­age growth in the in­dus­try and in­crease vis­i­tor ar­rivals. 

Sadler re­vealed that the air­line pays over US$300 per per­son in tax­es in each of the coun­tries to which it flies. 

He de­scribed this cost as pro­hib­i­tive. 

“There is not a dol­lar air­fare there yet for us. So, imag­ine when you are in the Caribbean, and you want to go some­where, and you want to take your wife and kids from A to C, it is US$1,200 in these tax­es and fees. So, we will on­ly have what we have in the way of Caribbean trav­el based on var­i­ous de­mands. But it is go­ing to be dif­fi­cult to in­crease the amount of fly­ing when we have to tell you, you have to pay this much in tax­es and fees. We have a lot of peo­ple who I hadn’t re­alised, un­til they want­ed to call us out on our change fee, be­cause they were tak­ing a do­mes­tic flight,” Sadler dis­closed. 

He said that some­one was com­plain­ing about why they had to pay a $50 change fee on a flight. 

“The an­swer was if the name of the des­ti­na­tion changed, ie the coun­try, it was an in­ter­na­tion­al flight. Even though it was 25 min­utes from here, 30 min­utes to there, these are still dif­fer­ent coun­tries. So, my fees, I think, are very rea­son­able in terms of what we charge.  

“But we have to col­lect the mon­ey for the gov­ern­ment. We have to pay the cred­it card fees of US$300. So we would tru­ly like to grow. We would love to see some gov­ern­ments bold enough to say, “Let’s cut the tax­es in half for Caribbean trav­el.” 

Fur­ther, Sadler said he is even wor­ried about the US$300 in tax­es as it makes him ner­vous.  

“It’s just too much mon­ey to have to pay. It’s go­ing to take a brave leader of a coun­try or two to lead that change. But we are not see­ing it yet,” he added. 

Last month, dur­ing an An­tigua and Bar­bu­da ra­dio in­ter­view, that coun­try’s Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne ex­plained why it is not so easy to low­er tax­es. 

“It is a dif­fi­cult propo­si­tion to ex­pand these air­ports and main­tain them. It takes an enor­mous amount of mon­ey, and you will find, for ex­am­ple, many of these air­ports with­in the Caribbean, have cer­tain fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions to fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions to the ex­tent the rev­enues they gen­er­ate, the coun­tries have to ser­vice their debts. So, it is not an easy propo­si­tion as some peo­ple may think,” Browne dis­closed. 

Last Au­gust in an in­ter­view with Busi­ness Guardian the air­line’s founder and chair­man, Lyn­don Gar­diner, said it is fi­nan­cial­ly sta­ble and here to stay. 

He said that it is very cost­ly to run an air­line and he be­lieves that the high cost is what ran LI­AT in­to bank­rupt­cy. 

The founder and chair­man of the 32-year-old air­line de­bunked all ru­mours that the com­pa­ny is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties. 

“We cer­tain­ly are not en­coun­ter­ing any fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties. We have a fair­ly round­ed avi­a­tion en­ter­prise. The com­pa­ny does a lot of dif­fer­ent things con­nect­ed with avi­a­tion, not just fly­ing. The is­sues we are hav­ing are all hu­man re­source-re­lat­ed, es­pe­cial­ly with pi­lots, as you know you can­not just take some­one off the streets and tell them to fly a plane. Caribbean Air­lines has al­so tar­get­ed some of our pi­lots, so we do have some con­straints in that re­gard,” Gar­diner dis­closed. 

In­ter­Caribbean Air­ways has 17 air­craft in its fleet, in­clud­ing four ATR 42-500s and three Em­braer ERJ-145s, ac­cord­ing to Gar­diner.