Brent Pin­heiro

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

When ul­tra-low cost car­ri­er Fron­tier Air­lines an­nounced last Thurs­day its in­ten­tion to be­gin fly­ing be­tween Puer­to Ri­co and Port of Spain in Ju­ly, the news came as a sur­prise to many.

That is be­cause the Den­ver-based car­ri­er has ze­ro pres­ence in the coun­try and has nev­er flown to T&T be­fore.

But de­spite hav­ing lit­tle name recog­ni­tion here, Fron­tier flies to over 120 des­ti­na­tions in the US, Caribbean, Mex­i­co and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca.

Since the 2023 Routes con­fer­ence in Chica­go, a Gov­ern­ment team, led by the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad & To­ba­go (AATT), has been ne­go­ti­at­ing to get des­ti­na­tion Trinidad on to Fron­tier’s ever-ex­pand­ing route map.

On Fri­day, Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell told Sun­day Busi­ness, the dri­ve to in­crease the num­ber of air­lines op­er­at­ing in­to T&T is part of the min­istry’s man­date to de­vel­op air ser­vices in this coun­try.

While Fron­tier’s ser­vice is ex­pect­ed to in­crease seat ca­pac­i­ty to and from North Amer­i­ca by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,900 seats month­ly, Mitchell says its “en­cour­ag­ing and ex­cit­ing for our tourism sec­tor as well as our busi­ness sec­tor look­ing at in­creased routes for car­go and trade.”

Dis­miss­ing con­cerns Fron­tier would com­pete di­rect­ly with Caribbean Air­lines, Mitchell says the two car­ri­ers op­er­ate in and tar­get two dif­fer­ent mar­kets. As an ul­tra-low cost car­ri­er, Fron­tier tar­gets the su­per price sen­si­tive, no-frills pas­sen­ger with min­i­mum lug­gage. CAL on the oth­er hand, as a full-ser­vice car­ri­er, tar­gets pas­sen­gers want­i­ng ad­di­tion­al com­fort and who are will­ing to pay for it.

While trav­el has come roar­ing back post-pan­dem­ic as the world emerged from lock­downs, a trend known as re­venge trav­el, the avi­a­tion in­dus­try has strug­gled to meet the surg­ing de­mand.

Work­ers changed jobs or were laid off due to the pan­dem­ic and air­ports in turn were forced to op­er­ate with small­er groups of trained em­ploy­ees.

Air­lines like Air Cana­da faced crew short­ages. Last June the Mon­tre­al-based car­ri­er an­nounced that it would re­sume fly­ing to Port of Spain. Three months lat­er, grap­pling with se­vere crew short­ages, the air­line sus­pend­ed the ser­vice in­def­i­nite­ly with no plans to re­sume it. That has left lo­cal car­ri­er Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) as the sole air­line on the Toron­to-Port of Spain route.

To make up for the loss of ser­vice from Air Cana­da, the Gov­ern­ment team has been court­ing an­oth­er air­line that pre­vi­ous­ly flew to T&T – West­Jet. On May 7th West­Jet of­fi­cials are due to meet with AATT of­fi­cials to dis­cuss the pos­si­bil­i­ty of re­sum­ing ser­vice to POS. The air­line has al­so ex­pressed in­ter­est in fly­ing in­to To­ba­go. If West­jet de­ploys its Boe­ing 737 MAX8 on the route, that would add an ad­di­tion­al 189 seats every time the air­line op­er­ates to/from Trinidad.

Con­vinc­ing an air­line to ser­vice a route is no easy task. Ac­cord­ing to Mitchell, in com­mer­cial air ser­vice de­vel­op­ment, some in­dus­try stan­dard in­cen­tives that may be of­fered, based on per­for­mance, in­clude mar­ket­ing/pro­mo­tion and re­duc­tions in air­port charges.

As Mitchell and his team aim to bring pas­sen­ger num­bers back to pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els, he says any new air­lift of­fers “op­por­tu­ni­ties for trade and busi­ness in­clude the in­creased seat ca­pac­i­ty and trav­el op­tions that will pro­vide busi­ness trav­ellers more con­nec­tion op­tions in­to lu­cra­tive mar­kets, as well as, in the “bel­ly” of the air­craft, greater ca­pac­i­ty for car­go and fre­quen­cies for the move­ment of air freight to and from Port of Spain to oth­er mar­kets.”

T&T’s trav­el­er pro­file is a mix of busi­ness, leisure, as well as those vis­it­ing friends and rel­a­tives (VFR). The coun­try’s lo­ca­tion in the south­ern Caribbean al­so of­ten means longer flight times, and jet air­craft are re­quired, some­thing that is short sup­ply right now as Amer­i­can plane­mak­er Boe­ing faces pro­duc­tion de­lays on its as­sem­bly lines and its Eu­ro­pean coun­ter­part Air­bus has a mas­sive back­log of de­mand for its air­craft.

Re­gion­al routes are, de­pend­ing on the air­craft used, short­er in na­ture and In­ter­Caribbean Air­ways has need­ed very lit­tle con­vinc­ing in its at­tempt to en­ter the T&T mar­ket.

There have been many com­plaints over the years about the high cost of re­gion­al trav­el, and while a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the av­er­age tick­et price is made up of tax­es and fees, Mitchell in­sists that T&T has some of the low­est tax­es and fees in the Caribbean.

In­ter­Caribbean has filed an ap­pli­ca­tion with the Trinidad & To­ba­go Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty (TTCAA) to ser­vice T&T. The Turks and Caicos-based air­line hopes to op­er­ate a Bar­ba­dos-Port of Spain route for Win­ter 2024, set­ting up a po­ten­tial price war with Caribbean Air­lines.

How­ev­er, should TTCAA ap­prove In­ter­Caribbean’s ap­pli­ca­tion, it would al­so mean ad­di­tion­al ser­vice for To­ba­go as the com­pa­ny is re­port­ed­ly in­ter­est­ed in op­er­at­ing a Guyana-To­ba­go-Trinidad route, tap­ping in­to Guyana’s grow­ing ex­pa­tri­ate pop­u­la­tion and the de­mand for leisure des­ti­na­tions.

Fron­tier’s Thurs­day an­nounce­ment is just one of the many re­cent an­nounce­ments from North Amer­i­can car­ri­ers of their in­ten­tion to op­er­ate to var­i­ous Caribbean des­ti­na­tions.

But this does not de­ter Mitchell. He says, “Com­pe­ti­tion is good for the air­line in­dus­try and will gen­er­ate con­sid­er­able lev­els of af­ford­abil­i­ty and ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty, ul­ti­mate­ly ben­e­fit­ing the en­tire mar­ket.”

Mitchell said that the na­tion­al air car­ri­er will sur­vive the new com­pe­ti­tion as CAL has been the num­ber one lead­ing Caribbean air­line for many years, and has the ti­tle of the Caribbean’s lead­ing brand.

“CAL will con­tin­ue to thrive and we will con­tin­ue to sup­port our na­tion­al car­ri­er,” said the T&T Min­is­ter of Tourism.

Ed­i­tor’s Note: In an ear­li­er ver­sion of this sto­ry post­ed on­line, we ex­plic­it­ly stat­ed that In­ter­Caribbean Air­ways’ en­try in­to the lo­cal mar­ket was part­ly due to low tax­es.

How­ev­er, the com­pa­ny has since made it clear that this is not the case.

It has al­so tak­en is­sue with a sug­ges­tion that the air­line fears its ap­pli­ca­tion to the TTCAA may be com­pro­mised due to favour for CAL.

Fur­ther­more, In­ter­Caribbean has point­ed out that it cur­rent­ly holds the ti­tle for best Cab­in Crew in the Caribbean.

We apol­o­gize for these er­rors of fact.