Brent Pin­heiro

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) is con­tin­u­ing its re­gion­al ex­pan­sion with the an­nounce­ment to­day that it will be­gin flights to Tor­to­la, British Vir­gin Is­lands. The air­line will op­er­ate a “milk run” (a flight that stops in sev­er­al places along a de­fined route) ser­vice four times week­ly out of Port of Spain to Tor­to­la via ei­ther An­tigua or Bar­ba­dos, with ser­vice ter­mi­nat­ing in San Juan, Puer­to Ri­co. CAL will use its fleet of ATR 72-600s on the route.

Caribbean Air­lines CEO Garvin Med­era said in a state­ment, “Re­gion­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty is at the heart of Caribbean Air­lines’ mis­sion. Our new ser­vice to Tor­to­la is a sig­nif­i­cant step in our growth strat­e­gy, and we are com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing seam­less trav­el ex­pe­ri­ences for our pas­sen­gers.”

Caribbean Air­lines has been ex­pand­ing its re­gion­al links as it at­tempts to con­nect the Span­ish, French, Dutch and Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean. CAL plans to add Mar­tinique and Guade­loupe to its net­work lat­er this year. These routes are meant, in part, to fill the void left by the now de­funct LI­AT1974.

A new en­ti­ty, LI­AT2020, be­gan com­mer­cial op­er­a­tions on Au­gust 6th with a ser­vice to St Lu­cia. The air­line is cur­rent­ly fly­ing a lim­it­ed sched­ule with ser­vice be­tween An­tigua, Bar­ba­dos, and St Lu­cia but plans to ex­pand to 11 des­ti­na­tions in Sep­tem­ber. T&T is re­port­ed­ly one of those des­ti­na­tions.