Less than a year af­ter Vir­gin At­lantic re­sumed ser­vice to To­ba­go, the To­ba­go Tourism Agency Lim­it­ed an­nounced it would be dis­con­tin­u­ing its air­line con­tract with Vir­gin At­lantic for air­lift be­tween To­ba­go and the UK.

In a re­lease TTAL said, this is the re­sult of a strate­gic re­view and re­align­ment of the Agency’s in­vest­ment in air­lift for the des­ti­na­tion.

TTAL con­firmed that on De­cem­ber 31, 2022, Vir­gin At­lantic will cease to op­er­ate its di­rect week­ly flight from Lon­don Heathrow to the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in To­ba­go. TTAL Ex­ec­u­tive Chair­man Ali­cia Ed­wards said the dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion to dis­con­tin­ue the air­lift con­tract was nec­es­sary as Vir­gin’s flight has not per­formed as well as oth­er car­ri­ers for the re­gion, and “is no longer a fi­nan­cial­ly vi­able op­tion for To­ba­go.”

Ed­wards said, “The re­turn on in­vest­ment for the Vir­gin At­lantic air­lift sub­sidy fund­ed by the pub­lic sec­tor has been de­te­ri­o­rat­ing steadi­ly over the years, to the point where the re­new­al of their con­tract could not be log­i­cal­ly de­fend­ed and ex­e­cut­ed. “

The re­lease added, “In re­assess­ing our des­ti­na­tion’s tourism prod­uct, state of the in­dus­try post-pan­dem­ic and oth­er tan­gi­ble con­sid­er­a­tions, des­ti­na­tion To­ba­go is not the best fit for a part­ner­ship with Vir­gin at this time.”

Vir­gin had on­ly re­sumed ser­vice to To­ba­go on Jan­u­ary 29, 2022, fol­low­ing the clo­sure of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s bor­ders in March 2020 as a re­sult of the Covid -19 pan­dem­ic.

Ed­wards not­ed de­spite Vir­gin’s ser­vice be­ing dis­con­tin­ued, there re­mained oth­er op­tions for Eu­ro­pean trav­ellers to come to To­ba­go in­clud­ing British Air­ways’ twice a week ser­vice from Lon­don’s Gatwick Air­port. She al­so not­ed there were reg­u­lar flights from Lon­don to Port of Spain, from which a flight to To­ba­go could be at­tained.

Vir­gin is­sued an ad­vi­so­ry of its own on Tues­day, in which the air­line’s Se­nior Vice Pres­i­dent Do­minic Kennedy ex­plained to cus­tomers the To­ba­go route would be dis­con­tin­ued

The state­ment read, “As cus­tomer de­mand con­tin­ues to re­turn strong­ly af­ter the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, we’re mak­ing ad­just­ments to up­com­ing fly­ing sched­ules to sup­port the ramp up of our op­er­a­tion and to re­flect changes in cus­tomer de­mand out­look.As a re­sult, dur­ing 2023, we’ve im­ple­ment­ed some changes to ser­vice fre­quen­cies and air­craft types and un­for­tu­nate­ly made some ad­vance can­cel­la­tions on cer­tain routes.”

The ad­vi­so­ry con­tin­ued, “As part of these sched­ule changes, we’ve tak­en the com­mer­cial de­ci­sion to end our Heathrow To­ba­go flights from 11th Jan­u­ary 2023. We’d like to sin­cere­ly thank our part­ners in Trinidad and To­ba­go for all their sup­port over the years. This beau­ti­ful des­ti­na­tion will al­ways hold a very spe­cial place in our hearts. We did have every in­ten­tion to con­tin­ue our ser­vice to the des­ti­na­tion and it is with re­gret that we are un­able to con­tin­ue our op­er­a­tions. As it stands, we do not have plans to op­er­ate the ser­vice in Win­ter 2023.”