Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Mem­bers of the pub­lic will pay from $960 to $1,000 to trav­el be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go via Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) un­der peak-pe­ri­od pric­ing, as Gov­ern­ment moves ahead with a pro­posed plan to in­tro­duce un­sub­sidised flights on the do­mes­tic air­bridge.

Min­is­ter of Trade, In­dus­try and Tourism Satyaka­ma “Ka­ma” Ma­haraj re­vealed this yes­ter­day, as he said Gov­ern­ment is look­ing to roll out morn­ing and evening flights be­tween T&T with­out sub­sidy, aimed at eas­ing fi­nan­cial pres­sure to op­er­ate the air­bridge and im­prove seat avail­abil­i­ty dur­ing high-de­mand pe­ri­ods.

CAL cur­rent­ly of­fers flights to To­ba­go at a sub­sidised cost of $400.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia dur­ing the launch of the Sail Clear plat­form at Cruise Inn, Ch­aguara­mas, Ma­haraj said the pro­pos­al would al­low pas­sen­gers to pur­chase guar­an­teed re­turn fare seats at mar­ket-based rates.

“We’re look­ing at two un­sub­sidised flights at peak times, morn­ing and evening, where pas­sen­gers pay for a guar­an­teed seat. If de­mand in­creas­es, more flights can be added,” Ma­haraj said, adding that the move is in­tend­ed to im­prove re­li­a­bil­i­ty on the route while re­duc­ing the fi­nan­cial bur­den on CAL, which cur­rent­ly op­er­ates heav­i­ly sub­sidised do­mes­tic ser­vices.

“If you want a flight to­mor­row, you pay. I think it would be about $800 to $1,000 re­turn, which is noth­ing—but you have a se­cure seat.”

He added that the ser­vice would cater to the de­mand.

“If we need more, we put more,” he said.

Ma­haraj al­so said Gov­ern­ment is in talks with ex­ter­nal car­ri­ers to ser­vice the route, while keep­ing open the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a lo­cal­ly dri­ven op­er­a­tion.

“We have a few in mind and dis­cus­sions are go­ing on. Maybe we’ll get some­one to do this, To­ba­go Ex­press or what­ev­er you want to call it,” he said.

On the planned re­lo­ca­tion of the do­mes­tic check­point, the min­is­ter not­ed that some ad­just­ments may be re­quired as the sys­tem is in­tro­duced, par­tic­u­lar­ly as pas­sen­gers adapt to new book­ing and trav­el arrange­ments.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia about the pro­pos­al yes­ter­day, for­mer Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty di­rec­tor gen­er­al Ramesh Lutch­me­di­al said he sees no is­sue with the in­tro­duc­tion of un­sub­sidised peak-hour flights be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go, not­ing that cur­rent in­ter-is­land fares are al­ready heav­i­ly sub­sidised and be­low mar­ket val­ue.

Lutch­me­di­al ex­plained that the Gov­ern­ment cur­rent­ly pro­vides a pub­lic ser­vice oblig­a­tion (PSO) sub­sidy to keep air trav­el be­tween the is­lands af­ford­able for trav­ellers who re­ly on the ser­vice for work, busi­ness and per­son­al trav­el. He not­ed that the sub­sidy ap­plies broad­ly to all pas­sen­gers, in­clud­ing tourists, but sug­gest­ed that dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed pric­ing could be con­sid­ered.

“I’ve al­ways held the view that gov­ern­ment heav­i­ly sub­sidis­es trav­el be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said, adding that while af­ford­able trav­el is es­sen­tial for res­i­dents, there may be room to re­con­sid­er whether non-res­i­dents should ben­e­fit from the same sub­sidy.

He point­ed out that tourism stake­hold­ers may be con­cerned that high­er fares could im­pact vis­i­tor ar­rivals, mak­ing the is­sue a del­i­cate bal­ance be­tween af­ford­abil­i­ty for lo­cals and com­pet­i­tive­ness for the tourism sec­tor.

How­ev­er, Lutch­me­di­al stressed that he sup­ports the in­tro­duc­tion of mar­ket-rate fares for cer­tain peak-time ser­vices.

“I don’t see a prob­lem with that. I would sup­port it,” he said, not­ing that pas­sen­gers will­ing to pay mar­ket prices dur­ing peak pe­ri­ods make the arrange­ment vi­able.

Mean­while, econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James said the in­tro­duc­tion of un­sub­sidised seats on the air­bridge could be a prac­ti­cal way to im­prove ac­cess and ef­fi­cien­cy in the do­mes­tic avi­a­tion sys­tem but on­ly if it is prop­er­ly struc­tured and based on da­ta-dri­ven pol­i­cy de­sign.

James ar­gued that the sys­tem must bal­ance af­ford­abil­i­ty with the re­al­i­ty that some pas­sen­gers are will­ing and able to pay more for pri­or­i­ty ac­cess and flex­i­bil­i­ty.

“Some of it re­quires means test­ing. Age might be a fac­tor. This might be a fac­tor. That might be a fac­tor. But there will be peo­ple who will be pre­pared to pay to get ac­cess to flights and pay a pre­mi­um to get ac­cess,” he said.

He ex­plained that a tiered pric­ing mod­el sim­i­lar to air­line cab­in class­es on in­ter­na­tion­al routes could be ap­plied lo­cal­ly, al­low­ing dif­fer­ent price lev­els for dif­fer­ent lev­els of ser­vice and ur­gency.

“You have to think through that. Some­thing down that road you have to head. You can have $600 seats rather than $400 sub­sidised seats. You can have $800 seats rather than $400 sub­sidised seats,” he not­ed.

He ar­gued that sim­i­lar prin­ci­ples could be ex­tend­ed to pub­lic trans­port sys­tems more broad­ly, in­clud­ing fer­ry ser­vices and even ur­ban trans­port, where not all ser­vices must cater strict­ly to the “least com­mon de­nom­i­na­tor.”

James added that pol­i­cy de­ci­sions should be in­formed by da­ta on who trav­els, how of­ten they trav­el and un­der what con­di­tions, warn­ing against po­lit­i­cal­ly con­ve­nient but poor­ly de­signed so­lu­tions.

How­ev­er, busi­ness­woman Di­ane Hadad ques­tioned if the pro­pos­al would serve more as elit­ist seg­re­ga­tion, as op­posed to a so­lu­tion to the in­ter-is­land trans­port woes.

Ask­ing if these flights would then be giv­en high­er pri­or­i­ty than the sub­sidised flights, she said, “Are we go­ing to make sure that those flights fly and the $400 ones are de­layed? Or if we have a break­down, we go­ing to make sure that the $1,000 peo­ple fly? There are a lot of things that have not been dis­cussed or ad­dressed.”

She added, “It has to be elit­ism, be­cause the man who has the mon­ey and can af­ford it, he is go­ing to pay his $1,000. I don’t know what the for­mu­la is. No­body has ex­plained that. They haven’t even had a dis­cus­sion with the peo­ple over here who live over here.”

She said this is the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive gov­ern­ment that has point­ed to the cost of the sub­sidy for the air­bridge, with­out sig­nif­i­cant­ly ad­dress­ing con­nec­tiv­i­ty con­cerns that have emerged both via air and sea trans­porta­tion be­tween the is­lands.

“I do not know if the per­son sit­ting at board lev­el, or the per­sons who have been man­dat­ed to treat with that en­ti­ty, have any knowl­edge of the air­line in­dus­try? Do they un­der­stand it, and do they un­der­stand the needs of the peo­ple of To­ba­go and the rights of those peo­ple as cit­i­zens of the twin-is­land state and coun­try, Trinidad and To­ba­go. So, there are many things that the peo­ple on the is­land of To­ba­go re­quire that are not avail­able,” Hadad said.

At­tempts to con­tact chair­man of the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, Cur­tis Williams, on the mat­ter were un­suc­cess­ful. —With re­port­ing by Pe­ter Christo­pher