Brent Pin­heiro

Re­porter

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

Air Cana­da is of­fi­cial­ly back in the T&T mar­ket, two years af­ter sus­pend­ing the Toron­to-Port of Spain route in­def­i­nite­ly. AC984 touched down at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al just af­ter one am on Sat­ur­day with 156 pas­sen­gers on­board.

De­spite some light show­ers, the Boe­ing 737 MAX 8 was still wel­comed with the tra­di­tion­al wa­ter can­non salute.

Air Cana­da will fly be­tween Cana­da and T&T three times week­ly – adding over 4,000 seats to the mar­ket month­ly. Cana­da is this coun­try’s sec­ond-largest source mar­ket, ac­count­ing for over 35,000 vis­i­tors an­nu­al­ly (not in­clud­ing the pan­dem­ic years).

The air­craft’s ar­rival is the cul­mi­na­tion of months of dis­cus­sions with Air Cana­da. Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty (AATT) gen­er­al man­ag­er Hay­den New­ton told a small group of of­fi­cials and spe­cial­ly in­vit­ed guests at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al to wel­come the air­line that its re­turn was a “strong vote of con­fi­dence in our twin is­land state”.

Air Cana­da is cer­tain­ly a fa­mil­iar brand in the T&T mar­ket, and ac­cord­ing to New­ton, it’s not the on­ly one we may see at Pi­ar­co in the com­ing years.

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, New­ton re­vealed that ul­tra-low-cost car­ri­er Spir­it Air­lines has ap­proached AATT about restart­ing op­er­a­tions in Trinidad – note­wor­thy be­cause just a few weeks ago, ul­tra-low-cost car­ri­er Fron­tier ex­it­ed the mar­ket, cit­ing forex chal­lenges.

How­ev­er, New­ton be­lieves low-cost car­ri­ers have a space in the T&T mar­ket.

He said: “The low-cost ex­per­i­ment works as long as it fits in­to some of the unique­ness of our mar­ket. And I think Spir­it has un­der­stood that and they have come back to us, to talk to us about com­ing lat­er in 2025 or 2026”.

Ac­cord­ing to New­ton, Cana­di­an low-cost car­ri­er West­Jet is al­so con­sid­er­ing ser­vice to both Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al and ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al in 2026. West­Jet has op­er­at­ed be­tween Cana­da and Port of Spain in the past.

Sev­er­al oth­er car­ri­ers have ex­pressed in­ter­est in adding T&T to their route maps, but lack the Air Ser­vices Agree­ments (ASA) re­quired to op­er­ate sched­uled flights. T&T signed sev­er­al Air Ser­vices Agree­ments with coun­tries such as Nige­ria and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates over the past few years. Sev­er­al oth­er agree­ments are ex­pect­ed to be signed in the com­ing months and years – among them Colom­bia and Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.

“Trinidad & To­ba­go has done some work in terms of en­sur­ing that there's an Air Ser­vices Agree­ment be­tween Colom­bia and Trinidad. We have done our part, and we have sub­mit­ted the agree­ment back to Co­lum­bia for their re­sponse. There are a few claus­es that need to be ad­just­ed, and as long as that hap­pens ... we feel that one will come on soon.”

A bi­lat­er­al ASA be­tween Colom­bia and T&T will open the door for Colom­bian car­ri­er avian­ca to op­er­ate in the T&T mar­ket. The air­line has al­ready re­ceived per­mis­sion from Aero­nau­ti­ca Civ­il (The Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty of Colom­bia) to op­er­ate up to sev­en week­ly flights be­tween Port of Spain and Bo­go­ta. It has al­so ap­proached the Trinidad & To­ba­go Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty for per­mis­sion to fly here.