Aviation Ministers Look at Air Crisis in Region

Caribbean ministers of aviation were due to meet in the Eastern Caribbean Island of St. Vincent this week to discuss the worsening airlift problem in the Caribbean, including the drastic reduction of service by American Eagle commuter airlines to tourism-dependent island nations, high fuel prices and heavy losses being wracked up by every single operator flying into or around the region.

Host Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves, whose island’s main airport can only accommodate small private jets or turbine aircraft, said the time has come for leaders to examine the possibility of establishing a single airline to serve the region, even though Antigua-based LIAT and Trinidad-owned Caribbean Airlines (CA) have both laid claim to such over the years.

The meeting comes as Delta flies to Guyana for the last time this week after five years and as all the regional airlines, be it Bahamas Air in the north or Suriname Airways to the south, operates with soaring debts that governments say are slowly but surely weighing down their national treasuries. Additionally, regional tourism is feeling the effects of an air passenger duty tax that Britain has imposed on every ticket to the region any passenger buys and the consolidation of services by some similarly cash-strapped carriers providing services to Caribbean trade bloc nations.

Gonsalves says the situation with Caribbean Airlines, which gobbled up Air Jamaica and has said it now regrets doing so because its bank balance has worsened, is flying regardless with “a loss of $44 million. Last year they made a loss in the sum of close to $84 million. That is plenty of money in any language whatsoever and there is rethinking of certain things and the call has been made by many persons for one Caribbean airline,” a super optimistic head of government said.

Smaller islands like St. Vincent and Dominica, without longer runways like the others because of nearby hills and mountains, have a particular stake in ensuring continued service from dedicated regional airlines, over which governments have some influence because decisions to cut routes to save dollars, as has happened in the past, have seriously affected airlifts to their own destinations.

“I am very mindful before BWIA was dissolved (now CA), BWIA took decisions where they simply cut a lot of flights without notice to Barbados, which affected us here in the Eastern Caribbean, and I see on more than one occasion where they have acted not consistent with our own transportation needs. I am not going to leave the bone of LIAT for the shadow of something else. So I would like to see a complete revamping of air transportation in the region so that we can get all the relevant synergies,” he said.

Source: Amsterdam News