KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has made a pas­sion­ate plea for more to be done to at­tract oth­er air­lines to ser­vice the lo­cal air­bridge.

He has even asked if To­ba­go should find mon­ey to lease and op­er­ate its own planes.

Au­gus­tine’s call comes amid com­plaints by To­bag­o­ni­ans of chal­lenges they con­tin­u­ous­ly face on the air and seabridge.

Two week­ends ago, thou­sands of do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al pas­sen­gers suf­fered dis­rup­tions with their flights af­ter over 93 Caribbean Air­lines pi­lots called in sick.

And, last Wednes­day, many pas­sen­gers on board the Cabo Star were left strand­ed at sea for 18 hours due to a fire on­board the ves­sel.

Speak­ing dur­ing a town hall meet­ing on in­ter-is­land trans­porta­tion and con­nec­tiv­i­ty at the Mount Irvin Bay Ho­tel yes­ter­day, Au­gus­tine sug­gest­ed an in­te­grat­ed agency be cre­at­ed to have over­sight of all air, sea and ground trans­porta­tion be­tween the is­lands.

He be­lieves the time has come for To­bag­o­ni­ans to have more op­tions for trav­el, oth­er than CAL.

“Find some so­lu­tions out­side of Caribbean Air­lines and force the Gov­ern­ment’s hand...Giv­en the in­cli­na­tions of CAL and those with pow­ers over CAL, it might be worth our while, this morn­ing, to con­sid­er so­lu­tions that are be­yond Caribbean Air­lines and be­yond curs­ing across the wa­ters,” Au­gus­tine said.

He ques­tioned if the time had even come for To­ba­go to lease its own planes.

“We al­so should dis­cuss if there are strate­gies we can em­ploy out­side of Cab­i­net, out­side of Caribbean Air­lines, to fix this. Should we find the mon­ey and lease some planes? Should we find every imag­in­able air­line that we can find and have them come here di­rect­ly?”

Au­gus­tine al­so ac­knowl­edged any air­line join­ing the route would be at a dis­ad­van­tage in terms of their tick­et prices, since CAL’s ser­vices on the air bridge are sub­sidised.

How­ev­er, he be­lieves there are ways to work around this.

As such, the Chief Sec­re­tary sug­gest­ed that as­sis­tance be giv­en to these air­lines to pur­chase their fu­el. He said there can al­so be oth­er in­cen­tives.

Au­gus­tine al­so voiced his dis­ap­proval of CAL’s de­ci­sion to cut the num­ber of dai­ly flights from 24 to 12 be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go due to their non-prof­itabil­i­ty.

Ref­er­enc­ing in­ter­na­tion­al trans­porta­tion en­ti­ties, he said many were not mak­ing a prof­it but still pro­vid­ed trans­porta­tion.

“I don’t know how much mon­ey the New York Sub­way makes, and if it makes prof­it. It is very old and dirty, and the trains are creak­ing, and it feels as if you are falling in­to pot­holes ever so of­ten. But I don’t know how prof­itable it is to them,” Au­gus­tine added.

Dur­ing the meet­ing, stake­hold­ers and res­i­dents al­so ex­pressed their dis­sat­is­fac­tion with both the air and seabridge. Many peo­ple said they were fed-up with fac­ing chal­lenges when tra­vers­ing be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Some of the is­sues in­clud­ed ven­dors who trav­el to Trinidad week­ly but are of­ten left with wilt­ed veg­eta­bles when they are strand­ed due to ves­sel de­lays, as well as pen­sion­ers who vis­it Trinidad of­ten for med­ical care but end up stuck at the port, fur­ther com­pris­ing their health.

‘No need to rein­vent the wheel’

But re­spond­ing to the Chief Sec­re­tary’s com­ments yes­ter­day, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said the Gov­ern­ment has al­ways been open to hav­ing oth­er air­lines work on the air­bridge.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view, Sinanan said, “Any air­line is free to come in­to Port-of-Spain once they meet the re­quire­ments and they abide by the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty’s re­quire­ments. We al­ways go out and en­cour­age air­lines to come to Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

“There are pri­vate com­pa­nies that of­fer pri­vate ser­vice be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go, be­tween Trinidad and Guyana, St Lu­cia, through­out the Caribbean so that’s noth­ing new that Far­ley is speak­ing about. It’s whether it will be at­trac­tive for them to come and op­er­ate com­mer­cial­ly in that sphere,” the min­is­ter added.

Asked whether the cost of flights with oth­er air­lines could be sub­sided, Sinanan said he could not com­ment fur­ther on the mat­ter, as that fell un­der the re­mit of the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

But chair­man of the To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber Mar­tin George was of the opin­ion there is no need to rein­vent the wheel.

In­stead of hav­ing new air­lines, he sug­gest­ed CAL get its act to­geth­er.

“It’s some­thing that on pa­per sounds good. But, in re­al­i­ty, it may not be that easy to put in­to ef­fect. So, I think rather than fo­cus­ing on that, I think we need to bring pres­sure on Caribbean Air­lines, bring pres­sure on the Gov­ern­ment and get them to pro­vide the type and qual­i­ty of ser­vices that we need in Trinidad and To­ba­go. “Why go and try to rein­vent the wheel when you al­ready have a wheel? It’s not work­ing prop­er­ly, but you need to just fix the wheel,” George said in a phone in­ter­view.

On­ly last week, To­ba­go West MP Sham­fa Cud­joe said the av­er­age per­son will not be able to af­ford trav­el be­tween the is­lands if an­oth­er air­line en­ters. She said an­oth­er air­line would not be heav­i­ly sub­sidised like CAL and a tick­et could cost as much as $1,000.