PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – The Trinidad and Tobago based Caribbean Airlines (CAL) Tuesday said it is seeking a meeting with regional leaders to discuss the possibility of reducing airfares to destinations throughout the Caribbean.
CAL Chief Executive Officer Ian Brunton, speaking on local radio here, said that government taxes account for as much as 60 per cent of a ticket paid by passengers.
“At the same time the airlines have a responsibility to try and keep their fares down to the absolute minimum and that’s what we are trying, we are doing our best to keep the fares down,” he said, adding that on some of the routes used by CAL “the government taxes and government fees are something around the 60 per cent of the total fare.
“When you have high taxes on these short range flights you find the proportion of the taxes is larger than the ticket cost and what we would like to see is a forum…which speaks to the governments and try to have some kind of concession particularly for people of the region to move about without having these large burdens or taxes or fees.
“It is important for us to have that dialogue,” he said, noting however that airlines also face the possibility of going out of business in the region if they put their prices “too low”.
“…to fly these airplanes is a costly business and we obviously have to pay our way. If we try to bring the fares too low down we will be going back to our governments for support and we don’t want to go back, particularly the Trinidad and Tobago government for financial support.
“So we have to be able to charge economic fares and there are certain fare levels that we can’t drop below, as I said we have to be able to pay our way,” he added.
