Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

RED­jet's plans to fly from T&T on May 8 are in trou­ble. Ramesh Lutch­me­di­al, di­rec­tor gen­er­al of the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (CATT), said yes­ter­day he had or­dered RED­jet to im­me­di­ate­ly cease all ad­ver­tis­ing of its fares to the three des­ti­na­tions to which it had been mar­ket­ing its $63 rate. The low-cost car­ri­er, which a week ago launched its ser­vices at the Carl­ton Sa­van­nah, St Ann's, said it planned to ser­vice the Trinidad, Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica and Guyana routes. Lutch­me­di­al said CATT dis­patched a let­ter, dat­ed yes­ter­day, to the low-cost car­ri­er in­form­ing it to de­sist from ad­ver­tis­ing fares or the mak­ing of any book­ings un­til it had re­ceived the re­quired per­mis­sion from the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties in T&T. Since the launch of RED­jet, there have been con­cerns sur­round­ing its ac­qui­si­tion of a li­cence to op­er­ate in T&T. Dur­ing the com­mence­ment of road works in St Au­gus­tine South yes­ter­day, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er said: "The per­ma­nent sec­re­tary has sub­mit­ted a re­port stat­ing that no­body has giv­en RED­jet per­mis­sion to fly in­to Trinidad." Warn­er said T&T was not against com­pe­ti­tion, but that there were laws air­lines want­i­ng to op­er­ate in T&T had to obey and ful­fil, which had not been done in the case of RED­jet. Warn­er said the air­line had not yet ap­proached the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of T&T for per­mis­sion to op­er­ate here.

Asked if he thought the air­line was guilty of "am­bush," Warn­er said he would not use that word to de­scribe the sit­u­a­tion, but that from his per­spec­tive, there was poor plan­ning on the part of the air­line.

Asked, too, if Gov­ern­ment had the ul­ti­mate pow­er to pre­vent an air­line from fly­ing in T&T, Warn­er said yes, but it would not do so be­cause there were rec­i­p­ro­cal avi­a­tion agree­ments be­tween coun­tries.

RED­jet has said its base fares start at US$63, but that rate did not in­clude gov­ern­ment and sales tax­es.

News­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ments stat­ed that those rates were sub­ject to dai­ly bank rates of con­ver­sion.

In a state­ment is­sued on Mon­day, Kevin Dud­ley, RED­jet's chief op­er­a­tions of­fi­cer, said the air­line re­ceived reg­u­la­to­ry ap­provals from the Air Trans­port Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty of Bar­ba­dos, un­der the ser­vice agree­ments be­tween Bar­ba­dos and all oth­er states, in­clud­ing the air ser­vices agree­ment be­tween the rel­e­vant coun­tries, to com­mence com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ties. Yes­ter­day, Lutch­me­di­al said while the air­line might have ob­tain its li­cence from Bar­ba­dos, it did not give the air­line au­to­mat­ic rights to fly in­to T&T.

Lutch­me­di­al ex­plained that the Air Trans­port Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty of Bar­ba­dos, un­der the air ser­vice agree­ments be­tween Bar­ba­dos and oth­er states, was sub­ject to the lo­cal laws of the oth­er coun­tries.

He said that means it was not an au­to­mat­ic right for RED­jet to op­er­ate in T&T. He said the air­line had to ap­ply to T&T and even Ja­maica and Guyana, as these li­cences would be based on the com­pli­ance of each coun­try's lo­cal laws. Lutch­me­di­al fur­ther out­lined the process in which a car­ri­er or flight op­er­a­tor had to en­gage be­fore ac­quir­ing a li­cence to fly in­to T&T. He said af­ter the air­line ac­quired its li­cence from Bar­ba­dos Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty, the Bar­ba­dos gov­ern­ment, through a diplo­mat­ic note sent to the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs, must des­ig­nate that RED­jet as a na­tion­al car­ri­er of Bar­ba­dos un­der the terms and con­di­tion of the civ­il avi­a­tion agree­ment be­tween Bar­ba­dos and T&T. Asked if he was aware that the For­eign Af­fairs Min­istry was in re­ceipt of such a note, Lutch­me­di­al said he was not cer­tain if that was the case.

"I am not sure...I do not want to say yes or no," he said. Fol­low­ing this note, Lutch­me­di­al said the T&T Civ­il Avi­a­tion would be in­formed and would have to en­sure that the Bar­ba­dos Civ­il Au­thor­i­ty is in com­pli­ance with the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty stan­dards of the in­ter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion be­fore it makes any rec­om­men­da­tion for the is­suance of a li­cence. Notwith­stand­ing this pro­ce­dure, Lutch­me­di­al said most im­por­tant­ly, CATT was an agency of the state and was guid­ed by gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy. "So mat­ters like these we have to con­sult with the line min­is­ter," he said. At­tempts yes­ter­day to con­tact Anne-Marie Ed­wards-Job, ac­count man­ag­er for RED­jet at San­dra Welch Far­rell and Com­pa­ny (SWF&Co), which is han­dling RED­jet's pub­lic re­la­tions, were un­suc­cess­ful. The T&T Guardian was told that Ed­wards-Job was in a meet­ing and she would be un­able to com­ment on any is­sue as she had an­oth­er en­gage­ment af­ter­wards.