BRENT PIN­HEIRO

Pro­duc­er

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

For the first time in the com­pa­ny’s his­to­ry, Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) will link Guyana and Suri­name. From No­vem­ber 3rd, the air­line will dou­ble its non-stop ser­vices to Suri­name—mov­ing from two week­ly flights to four week­ly flights out of Port of Spain.

CAL is al­so adding on a twice-week­ly Suri­name sec­tor to its flights out of Guyana’s Ogle Air­port.

Ac­cord­ing to the air­line, on Fri­days and Sun­days, its Port of Spain ser­vice to Eu­gene F. Cor­reia In­ter­na­tion­al (OGL) will con­tin­ue on­wards to Jo­han Adolf Pen­gel In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port (PBM) in Suri­name. The flights will be op­er­at­ed by CAL’s Boe­ing 737-8 and ATR 72-600 fleet.

CEO of Air­port Man­age­ment Ltd, Vi­jay Chotkan, says CAL’s net­work ex­pan­sion fur­ther strength­ens ties be­tween T&T, Guyana, and Suri­name. Call­ing it a “sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone” for the en­tire re­gion, he says it “opens doors to new op­por­tu­ni­ties in trade, tourism, and col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween these na­tions.” Air­port Man­age­ment Ltd is the Op­er­a­tor of Jo­han Adolf Pen­gel In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

Dionne Ligoure, Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Ex­ec­u­tive Man­ag­er at Caribbean Air­lines, told Guardian Me­dia that net­work ex­pan­sion is part of the air­line’s vi­sion to con­nect the re­gion “seam­less­ly and sus­tain­ably”. She says by the end of the year the air­line will con­nect the Dutch, French, Span­ish and Eng­lish Caribbean with sev­er­al new routes and added ca­pac­i­ty on ex­ist­ing routes.

Cur­rent­ly, Trans Guyana Air­ways is the on­ly op­er­a­tor on the Ogle-Para­mari­bo route. It is used pri­mar­i­ly by oil work­ers with on­ward con­nec­tions to/from Am­s­ter­dam via KLM Roy­al Dutch Air­lines.

An Avianca Airbus A320 aircraft. [Photo: Avianca]

Guyana’s Ched­di Ja­gan In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port will al­so re­ceive a new ser­vice come De­cem­ber. On Thurs­day, Colom­bian air­line Avian­ca an­nounced its in­ten­tion to com­mence twice-week­ly di­rect flights be­tween Bo­go­ta, Colom­bia and Guyana, be­gin­ning De­cem­ber 11th. The air­line will use its A320 air­craft on the route.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from Ched­di Ja­gan In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port Cor­po­ra­tion, Guyana has added an ad­di­tion­al 200,000 seats and 125,000 pas­sen­ger move­ments for the year thus far.