ELIZ­A­BETH GON­ZA­LES

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) is at the fi­nal stage of an ac­tive pro­pos­al to in­tro­duce an air­line com­pa­ny for in­ter­na­tion­al and do­mes­tic flights out of To­ba­go.

Speak­ing on a morn­ing show ear­li­er this week, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said his ex­ec­u­tive is in favour of the idea and is at the stage of fi­nal­is­ing the agree­ment. He said when this is done, the pub­lic will know.

“We have the ac­tive pro­pos­al now for a com­pa­ny that will make To­ba­go es­sen­tial­ly its home air­port. It has found favour with the ex­ec­u­tive, so we are at the stage of hav­ing the agree­ment fi­nalised so we could sign on the dot­ted line. As soon as we sign the dot­ted line, we would let peo­ple know about that,” Au­gus­tine said.

In Au­gust, the Chief Sec­re­tary said it was time to look be­yond Caribbean Air­lines to en­sure more ef­fec­tive air trans­porta­tion for the is­land. He had even sug­gest­ed the THA lease its own planes.

As he re­vealed the progress of the cur­rent plan, Au­gus­tine said part of the agree­ment will al­low To­ba­go to im­me­di­ate­ly have ac­cess to both in­ter­na­tion­al and lo­cal flights to ser­vice the is­land.

He said this is all part of build­ing the is­land’s tourism in­dus­try.

“If we have a tourism in­dus­try we have to build, it hinges up­on the move­ment of peo­ple and get­ting peo­ple in­to the space.”

Ad­dress­ing the need to in­crease seat­ing ca­pac­i­ty dur­ing peak sea­sons on the is­land, Au­gus­tine said in his last con­ver­sa­tion with Caribbean Air­lines, he raised the sug­ges­tion of leas­ing two planes. How­ev­er, he said not even leas­ing the planes were able to meet To­ba­go’s air trav­el de­mands in the past.

“I am told that based on the da­ta, not even that was able to meet the de­mands for the flights. I’m say­ing sea­son­al­ly and on week­end and times when we know its high peak ar­eas, we re­al­ly need to in­crease the flight load,” he ex­plained.

At­tempts to con­tact Caribbean Air­line’s head of com­mu­ni­ca­tions Dionne Ligoure and the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty for com­ments were un­suc­cess­ful.