Nadaleen Singh

Caribbean Air­lines Ltd (CAL) is con­tin­u­ing to ex­plore prospects for a code shar­ing agree­ment with Air In­dia.This was con­firmed by CAL chair­man Ra­bindra Moo­nan who said dis­cus­sions with Air In­dia of­fi­cials are con­tin­u­ing and the des­ti­na­tions be­ing looked at are Lon­don and New York. A code­share agree­ment al­lows two or more air­lines share the same flight. A seat can be pur­chased on one air­line but is ac­tu­al­ly op­er­at­ed by a co­op­er­at­ing air­line un­der a dif­fer­ent flight num­ber or code.

"These trade talks are tak­ing place and we at Caribbean Air­lines would want to be on board to make it eas­i­er for busi­ness and for oth­er types of trav­el be­tween T&T and In­dia," Moo­nan said.

"It (the talks) are still at the ex­plorato­ry stages. It may take some time be­fore we ac­tu­al­ly come to an agree­ment but we thought that we should not al­low it to linger, de­spite hav­ing gone there more than a year and a half ago. We thought now is the op­por­tune time giv­en the trade con­fer­ences which have been tak­ing place." Malay Mis­ra, In­dia's High Com­mis­sion­er to T&T, said Air In­dia and CAL are try­ing to de­ter­mine whether it is vi­able to have a code shar­ing agree­ment.

"We've signed a frame­work agree­ment which is called a bi­lat­er­al air ser­vices agree­ment in Jan­u­ary last year, dur­ing the Prime Min­is­ter's vis­it to In­dia. With­in that agree­ment we can cer­tain­ly see if it is pos­si­ble."This has to be a com­mer­cial arrange­ment be­tween Caribbean Air­lines and Air In­dia and it will de­pend on the fea­si­bil­i­ty first of all, the flights can be linked, sec­ond­ly the traf­fic, whether you have ad­e­quate traf­fic to jus­ti­fy that kind of arrange­ment."

Mishra added: "I un­der­stand there is a se­nior tech­ni­cal team from Caribbean Air­lines go­ing to Del­hi to dis­cuss this." He said once the two sides set­tle on a suit­able agree­ment there would be ben­e­fits or both sides in terms of trade, tourism and oth­er ar­eas."We should give some time for the vol­ume of traf­fic to in­crease and not look at the vol­ume of traf­fic now to de­vel­op some kind of link­age. Now there is not much traf­fic. T&T can even be­come a hub to serve oth­er coun­tries in the Caribbean," Mishra said.