Brent Pin­heiro

brent.pin­heiro

@guardian.co.tt

Three years ago, the Jun­ta de Aviación Civ­il (JAC), the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic’s civ­il avi­a­tion board, grant­ed ul­tra-low cost car­ri­er (UL­CC) Ara­jet Air­lines per­mis­sion to op­er­ate flights be­tween the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and Trinidad & To­ba­go. Ear­li­er this year, T&T signed an Air Ser­vices Agree­ment with the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic clear­ing the way for sched­uled flights. How­ev­er, de­spite hav­ing per­mis­sion to fly, Ara­jet says the ear­li­est po­ten­tial start date for sched­uled flights is 2028.

Re­spond­ing to a ques­tion from Guardian Me­dia at the Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean Air Trans­port As­so­ci­a­tion (AL­TA) AGM and Air­line Lead­ers Fo­rum cur­rent­ly tak­ing place in Mex­i­co City, Ara­jet’s chief com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer, Manuel Lu­na, said the com­pa­ny will not launch a route to POS any­time soon be­cause it is await­ing de­liv­ery of air­craft from man­u­fac­tur­er Boe­ing.

“Once we get more planes from Boe­ing we are go­ing to be more open to open­ing routes like the one in Trinidad, but that is not go­ing to be hap­pen­ing in 2027,” Lu­na said, adding, “If that hap­pens it’s prob­a­bly some­thing that is go­ing to hap­pen be­tween 2028 and 2029.” The com­pa­ny has 16 Boe­ing 737 MAX 8s in ac­tive ser­vice.

In the mean­time, Ara­jet’s fo­cus is on con­sol­i­dat­ing its cur­rent Latin Amer­i­can mar­kets. Ara­jet cur­rent­ly flies to 30 des­ti­na­tions in 17 coun­tries, and plans to ex­pand its US mar­kets in 2027. That would po­ten­tial­ly open­ing up new routes in the US East Coast and the mid­dle of the coun­try. It’s al­so await­ing reg­u­la­to­ry clear­ance to launch flights to Venezuela as ear­ly as March next year. It has seen strong growth, not on­ly in Latin Amer­i­can, but the Caribbean as well.

In 2022, the air­line car­ried just 7,000 pas­sen­gers be­tween Ja­maica and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, fast for­ward to 2026 and the air­line is pro­ject­ed to car­ry 72,000 pas­sen­gers by the end of the year. Over­all, the air­line ex­pects to car­ry over three mil­lion pas­sen­gers both this year and next year.

How­ev­er, Lu­na ad­mits the com­pa­ny is op­er­at­ing in a chal­leng­ing en­vi­ron­ment with el­e­vat­ed fu­el prices af­fect­ing Ara­jet's abil­i­ty to be­come prof­itable. Cit­ing strong sales fig­ures for Sep­tem­ber (25 per cent high­er than in­ter­nal pro­jec­tions), Lu­na said the com­pa­ny would have al­ready been prof­itable if not for the con­flict. And while the in­dus­try hopes for a quick end to the US-Iran con­flict and a sub­se­quent drop in fu­el prices, Lu­na said the mis­sion re­mains the same - to con­nect all of the Amer­i­c­as to the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.