Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

Vice pres­i­dent of mar­ket­ing for Boe­ing's Com­mer­cial Air­planes Randy Tin­seth said costs would be cut at Caribbean Air­lines through ser­vices of­fered by his firm.

It is en­vis­aged that the Boe­ing 737 Com­po­nent Ser­vices Pro­gramme (CSP) of­fered to Caribbean Air­lines, could help save the na­tion­al air­line as much as 30 per cent on costs re­lat­ed to in­ven­to­ry, re­pairs and ad­min­is­tra­tion. Tin­seth added that the Boe­ing 737, a short to medi­um range air­plane, added val­ue to Caribbean Air­lines through its re­duced op­er­at­ing and main­te­nance costs. "We think we are well-po­si­tioned in this mar­ket here in Trinidad with the B-737," Tin­seth told the Trinidad Guardian. Val­ue is what it is all about in this in­dus­try be­cause air­lines want to thrive. They want to gen­er­ate rev­enue. They want to low­er their costs. They want to be prof­itable and we think that they can do that with our prod­ucts." Caribbean Air­lines has a fleet of eight B-737 jet air­craft.

"The most im­por­tant thing we can do in any mar­ket­place is to know your cus­tomer and have a close re­la­tion­ship with your cus­tomer. That is for them to de­ter­mine, whether we have a good re­la­tion­ship but we are do­ing every­thing we can to have a suc­cess­ful busi­ness re­la­tion­ship," Tin­seth said. Boe­ing has agreed to man­age spare parts and oth­er com­po­nents of in­ven­to­ry for Caribbean Air­lines. It al­so guar­an­teed that Caribbean Air­lines would have work­ing re­place­ments for failed parts with­in 24 hours with­out hav­ing to stock up on spares or pay long-term hold­ing costs. "As we look at this coun­try, we have an ex­clu­sive Boe­ing car­ri­er here in Caribbean Air­lines. They have a fleet of nine (of our) air­planes. They have gone through a re­struc­tur­ing process. "They have a world-class re­li­a­bil­i­ty and de­pend­abil­i­ty in their fleet. They op­er­ate a new route struc­ture that has been suc­cess­ful for us. So it is a good com­bi­na­tion," Tin­seth said. He boast­ed that its 737 range of jet­lin­ers had won or­ders for more than 6,000 air­planes, which were more air­planes than its biggest com­peti­tor had won for its en­tire prod­uct line. Boe­ing has al­so in­clud­ed Caribbean Air­lines in the mem­ber­ship of its Steer­ing Com­mit­tee for its Next-Gen­er­a­tion 737 Fleet Team.

"This (the Caribbean) is a mar­ket that con­tin­ues to grow. It is a mar­ket that con­tin­ues to grow as the econ­o­my grows so clear­ly we see strong growth mov­ing in­to the fu­ture and a bright fu­ture for air­lines here in the re­gion," Tin­seth said. Ac­cord­ing to the vice pres­i­dent of Sales and Mar­ket­ing for Boe­ing Com­mer­cial Avi­a­tion Ser­vices, Dan da Sil­va, Caribbean Air­lines was "tak­ing a big step to­wards greater fleet ef­fi­cien­cy and will be able to of­fer a bet­ter prod­uct by fo­cus­ing on the pas­sen­ger, in­stead of spares pro­vi­sion­ing" through its CSP agree­ment with Boe­ing.