Senior reporter
peter.christopher@guardian.co.tt
National airline, Caribbean Airlines Ltd (CAL) carried 17.5 per cent more passengers on the domestic airbridge for the first four months of 2024, than for the same period in 2023.
Statistics provided by CAL indicate that for the period January to April, 2024, some 223,033 passengers flew on the domestic airbridge. That compares with 189,852 passengers who flew from Trinidad and Tobago and back between January and April 2023.
Yesterday and over the weekend, CAL issued newspaper advertisements in which it listed statistics for flights from Trinidad to Tobago and vice versa for the period January 1 to April 30, 2024.
In that time the airline operated 3,523 flights, while for the same period in 2023, 3031 were made available between the islands. That means the majority state-owned airline operated 16.2 per cent more flights for the first four months of 2024 than for the same period in 2023.
In the first third of 2024, 223,033 passengers flew on the domestic air bridge on the 248,344 seats made available. That means passengers occupied close to 90 per cent of the available seats during the four-month period.
Some 189,852 passengers flew between Trinidad and Tobago from January to April 2023 while 210,256 seats were available.
The number of unused seats for the period was 25,311, 4,907 more unused seats than compared to the 20,404 vacant seats noted for the same period last year.
Based on the current, one-way airfare of $200, that would mean CAL grossed about $44.6 million, assuming all of its passengers paid.
About 100 seats a day have been left unused along the airbridge for the first four months of 2024.
The airline said that only 39 seats on average to Tobago were left unused in March. In April, on flights from Tobago to Trinidad only 57 seats per day on average were left unused.
In January 2024, on flights from Trinidad to Tobago, 155 seats per day on average were unused. On flights from Tobago to Trinidad in January, there were an average of 125 vacancies.
On average, February saw 119 empty seats a day on flights from Trinidad to Tobago, while 136 seats on average were vacant on flight back from Tobago on a daily basis.
March 2024 had the overall lowest, unused-seat average both ways, as flights from Tobago to Trinidad averaged 104 vacant seats, while only 39 seats on average were unused in March.
In April, CAL says some 102 seats were unused a day for flights from Trinidad to Tobago, while from Tobago to Trinidad some 58 seats were unused on average.
The number of seats made available by CAL for the airbridge was the source of some bitterness in Tobago last year.
Speaking during a town hall meeting on inter-island transportation and connectivity at the Mount Irvine Bay Hotel in August, chief secretary of the Tobago House of Assembly, Farley Augustine, said had come for Tobagonians to have more options for travel, other than CAL.
“Find some solutions outside of Caribbean Airlines and force the Government’s hand...Given the inclinations of CAL and those with powers over CAL, it might be worth our while, this morning, to consider solutions that are beyond Caribbean Airlines and beyond cursing across the waters,” Augustine said.
He questioned if the time had even come for Tobago to lease its own planes.
“We also should discuss if there are strategies we can employ outside of Cabinet, outside of Caribbean Airlines, to fix this. Should we find the money and lease some planes? Should we find every imaginable airline that we can find and have them come here directly?”
There were also complaints about the inadequacy of seats on the airbridge for Easter 2023.
