There is a price that we must pay for every­thing we own, in­clud­ing the ameni­ties that we en­joy, per­son­al­ly or as a coun­try. Be­fore ac­quir­ing those ameni­ties, how­ev­er, it is nec­es­sary for us to recog­nise the cost of the ben­e­fits we de­rive from them and de­ter­mine whether the cost jus­ti­fies the ben­e­fits. It is there­fore in this con­text that the im­pli­ca­tions of the open­ing of the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on a 24-hour ba­sis are be­ing ex­am­ined.

In 2007, as ar­rivals to To­ba­go from the UK and Eu­rope con­tin­ued to de­cline, due in the main to the wors­en­ing of the ad­verse for­eign ad­vi­sories that fol­lowed a spate of rapes and at­tacks on vis­i­tors, the Di­vi­sion of Tourism turned to the US mar­ket where the ad­vi­sories were less promi­nent. Caribbean Air­lines Ltd (CAL) in­di­cat­ed in no un­cer­tain man­ner its re­luc­tance to serve To­ba­go in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) then en­gaged the ser­vices of Delta Air­lines to pro­vide air­lift be­tween At­lanta and To­ba­go once week­ly. These Delta ser­vices were in­tend­ed to fa­cil­i­tate par­tic­u­lar­ly the dive seg­ment of the leisure in­dus­try.

How­ev­er, the divers were not pre­pared to re­main sev­en con­sec­u­tive days in To­ba­go and there­fore those that ar­rived in To­ba­go on the Delta Sun­day night flight were able to fly to Port-of-Spain on a Wednes­day or a Thurs­day. But there were those who wished to fly in on a Wednes­day night on Con­ti­nen­tal, Delta and Amer­i­can through Pi­ar­co and re­turn di­rect­ly from To­ba­go by Delta on Sun­day morn­ing. To fa­cil­i­tate the lat­ter group it was de­sir­able that do­mes­tic flights of­fer­ing con­nec­tions at Pi­ar­co should be avail­able. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, Crown Point was closed at 10 pm and these pas­sen­gers were forced to overnight in Trinidad.

This quite nat­u­ral­ly was a se­ri­ous dis­in­cen­tive to these divers who could board a flight in Mi­a­mi, New York or else­where and fly di­rect to Cu­ra­cao, Aru­ba or Be­lize with­out chang­ing flights-let alone overnight­ing on the way. Over the years, as well, there were times when pas­sen­gers were un­able to be all ac­com­mo­dat­ed on the do­mes­tic ser­vices be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and were left strand­ed at ei­ther Pi­ar­co or Crown Point, but this oc­curs at every air­port all over the world. How­ev­er, since 2008, arrange­ments have been in place for ex­tra flights to be op­er­at­ed by CAL, pro­vid­ed pri­or no­tice is giv­en to the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty/Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty (CAA) in To­ba­go.

In these cir­cum­stances, the THA, in 2007 or 2008, ap­proached the CAA with the re­quest that it con­sid­ers the open­ing of Crown Point Air­port on a 24-hour ba­sis. At the meet­ings held be­tween the As­sem­bly and the CAA, the au­thor­i­ty in­di­cat­ed that it was pos­si­ble but ex­treme­ly ex­pen­sive and it will take some time to im­ple­ment. It was point­ed out that an­oth­er shift had to be em­ployed and ac­com­mo­da­tion and trans­porta­tion costs al­so had to be fac­tored in. In ad­di­tion, ad­e­quate staff need­ed to be trained. In fact, it was sug­gest­ed that To­bag­o­ni­ans should be of­fered schol­ar­ships to be­come res­i­dent air traf­fic con­trollers, there­by re­duc­ing the ac­com­mo­da­tion costs to the State. In fact, sev­er­al ad­ver­tise­ments were pub­lished in the lo­cal news­pa­pers to this ef­fect with­out re­spons­es. The Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty would al­so have to pro­vide ad­di­tion­al funds to staff the ex­tra shift/s.

Clear­ly, to achieve the 24-hour-a-day op­er­a­tion at Crown Point en­tailed sig­nif­i­cant fa­cil­i­ta­tion costs and hu­man re­source ad­just­ments. Both the CAA and the THA agreed that, giv­en the chal­lenges, it was not fea­si­ble to pur­sue the 24-hour open­ing op­tion and it was pro­posed in­stead that fo­cus should be placed on the op­er­a­tion of a late "mop-up" flight to fa­cil­i­tate in­ter­na­tion­al pas­sen­gers ar­riv­ing at Pi­ar­co des­tined to To­ba- go and to ac­com­mo­date lo­cal pas­sen­gers wish­ing to use the late ser­vice.

Ac­cord­ing­ly, CAL was ap­proached and agreed to op­er­ate these "mop-up" flights three times a week, de­part­ing Pi­ar­co around mid­night. These flights were to be used to test the fea­si­bil­i­ty of the flights since it was clear that if the ser­vices were not eco­nom­i­cal­ly jus­ti­fi­able, CAL would, as it was known to do, pull the flights with­out warn­ing, there­by frus­trat­ing the pur­pose for which they were in­tend­ed and for which all the ex­pens­es were be­ing in­curred.

CAL agreed to op­er­ate the flights. The ser­vices were pub­li­cised in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and do­mes­ti­cal­ly. How­ev­er, true to form, af­ter about two months, and with­out warn­ing, the air­line dis­con­tin­ued these late flights. It was able to show that the flights' load fac­tor av­er­aged 15 per cent, earn­ing $4,500 per ro­ta­tion. We are told by CAL that a ro­ta­tion costs US$7,000 each. This trans­lates in­to a loss of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $40,000 per ro­ta­tion or $14 mil­lion a year. At this rate, the cost of this "mop-up" flight, if op­er­at­ed for a year, would have rep­re­sent­ed 70 per cent of the $20 mil­lion cap that was placed on the sub­sidy for all the do­mes­tic ser­vices.

There are over 4,000 air bridge flights op­er­at­ed an­nu­al­ly. In these cir­cum­stances, it was dif­fi­cult to jus­ti­fy the re­ten­tion of the "mop-up" flight. With the in­clu­sion of the air­port fa­cil­i­ta­tion ex­pen­di­ture, the cost of op­er­at­ing this late flight was pro­hib­i­tive. Since then, the crime sit­u­a­tion in T&T has served to dis­cour­age trav­el on the roads of the coun­try af­ter 10 pm and there­fore load fac­tors on these flights can fall even fur­ther. Run­ning an air­port is a huge­ly ex­pen­sive busi­ness that in most coun­tries op­er­ates along strict com­mer­cial lines, gen­er­at­ing prof­its that are used in the ex­pan­sion and main­te­nance of the fa­cil­i­ties. At many of them, the high day­light ac­tiv­i­ty com­pen­sates for the lull in night/ear­ly morn­ing traf­fic.

This qui­et pe­ri­od is used to clean and ser­vice the air­ports in prepa­ra­tion for the hec­tic day­light op­er­a­tions. In To­ba­go, on the oth­er hand, there are lim­it­ed flight move­ments that do not seem to jus­ti­fy an un­eco­nom­i­cal "mop-up" flight. I re­call the promise by the Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port al­most 16 months ago at a meet­ing at Mount Irvine that the ren­o­va­tion and ex­pan­sion of Crown Point Air­port will com­mence in De­cem­ber, 2011. This was re­peat­ed in the pres­ence of the Prime Min­is­ter at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port when the air­port was re­named last year. I sin­cere­ly hope that the 24-hour ini­tia­tive is not a pub­lic re­la­tions gim­mick and that it will suc­ceed and be sus­tained over time.

NE Wil­son

To­ba­go