St Lucia’s Tourism Minister Allan Chastanet is due in Trinidad and Tobago on Friday for talks with officials of the Caribbean Airlines (CAL) on increasing the number of airline seats and the increased cost of travel across the region.
CAL recently announced plans to introduce Dash 8 services this month to a number of destinations in the south Caribbean.
While St. Lucia was not named among the islands to be serviced by the carrier, Chastanet, who has often been critical of the regional airline, LIAT over its services, said he is hoping to cut a deal with Caribbean Airlines to begin flights to the island as soon as possible.
Chastanet has defended his decision to hold talks with CAL insisting that there is need for competition on the various routes.
“LIAT has had three and a half to four years in order to restructure itself in order to become more competitive, but as we have heard the airline continues to lose money,” he said noting that adjustments by the airline has always been accompanied by higher air fares and less capacity.
“So it seems like LIAT has chosen a model that suits LIAT rather than perceiving itself as an economic driver for this region,” Chastanet added.
He said the decision by the Stephenson King administration to approach Caribbean Airlines to begin a service here was intended to boost arrivals from within the region particularly ahead of this years’ Jazz Festival scheduled for the first week in May.
Official figures show that since 2005, St. Lucia has been recording a 60,000 reduction in intra-regional passengers with several small hotels on the island experiencing the effects of the decline.
Chastanet said that he is now looking for “some non-stop services between Trinidad and St. Lucia and also some services from Trinidad through Barbados.
He said that talks were also being held with American Eagle for two daily flights starting in April and there are also plans to introduce two services a day between St. Lucia and Barbados.
“So between Caribbean Airlines, American Eagle and CARICOM Airlines we could be seeing a very different scenario with the flow of regional traffic during the second half of the year,” Chastanet said. (CMC)
