REDJET has already taken to the skies.
Unknown to many, the low-cost Barbados-based carrier has bowled off its operations with charter flights for the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB).
The West Indies and Pakistan cricket teams, plus the TWI Television crew covering the ongoing Digicel home series, were brought to Barbados from St Lucia on a special REDJet charter flight last week Tuesday.
And yesterday, another charter was arranged for their journey to Guyana, where the fifth and final One-Day International will be played at the National Stadium in Providence.
The 149-seater jet aircraft left the Grantley Adams International Airport around 1 p.m. for the one-hour flight to the Cheddi Jagan Airport in Timehri.
When contacted yesterday, WICB corporate communications officer Imran Khan conceded the board entered the arrangement with the low-budget airline from a strictly business perspective.
“I won’t say that the WICB has a partnership with REDJet. It is a business arrangement. The WICB has chartered REDJet for trips from St Lucia to Barbados and Barbados to Guyana,” he said.
Last month, the airline announced May 8, as the start-up date for operations while unveiling low-cost fares out of Barbados from as low as US$9.99 to Trinidad, Guyana and Jamaica.
However, REDJet’s plan hit a snag when Trinidad and Tobago’s Minister of Transport and Works Austin “Jack” Warner revealed that he wasn’t aware that the airline had been given permission to operate in the twin-island republic.
It was subsequently confirmed by Ramesh Lutchmedial, director general of the Civil Aviation Authority in Port-of-Spain, that the carrier’s application was being processed.
Hundreds of prospective travellers on the airline have been booking online over the past two weeks, but have been unable to pay either by credit card or cash at any of the advertised payment outlets.
Only last Friday, the Digicel store in Sheraton Mall and several other SurePay outlets revealed that their system wasn’t set up as yet to accept payments from persons who had made bookings online.
