Brent Pin­heiro 

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt 

British Air­ways has an­nounced plans to op­er­ate non-stop flights to Trinidad next year. Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from the air­line, flights will op­er­ate on Sun­days, Tues­days, and Thurs­days from Lon­don Gatwick (LGW) to Port of Spain (POS). The change is ef­fec­tive 26 March 2023. The last time Port of Spain was linked di­rect­ly to Lon­don was back in 2016 when Caribbean Air­lines of­fered non­stop flights to Gatwick. 

This lat­est an­nounce­ment rep­re­sents a re­duc­tion in ser­vice to Trinidad as the air­line cur­rent­ly flies to POS 5 times week­ly via St. Lu­cia. Flights to and from To­ba­go now op­er­ate on Tues­days and Fri­days al­so via St Lu­cia.   

Con­tact­ed on the de­ci­sion, Min­is­ter of Tourism and Cul­ture Ran­dall Mitchell, who is abroad on of­fi­cial busi­ness, said the move could boost T&T’s mar­ket­ing ef­forts.  

“This new di­rect route via British Air­ways al­lows for Des­ti­na­tion Trinidad and To­ba­go to now have greater di­rect con­nec­tiv­i­ty to the UK’s in­bound mar­ket. Ac­cess through Lon­don Gatwick al­so now opens up the des­ti­na­tion to the South Lon­don di­as­po­ra mar­ket,” Mitchell said. 

“With the es­ti­mat­ed size of BA air­craft ser­vic­ing this route hav­ing an av­er­age ca­pac­i­ty of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 312 (de­pen­dant on the air­line’s con­fig­u­ra­tion), Trinidad can now see its in­bound mar­ket in­crease by at least 1,000 pas­sen­gers week­ly from this re­gion alone.  

“This new ser­vice, cou­pled with the suc­cess of the KLM route, will be a game chang­er in terms of ac­cess in­to both Trinidad and To­ba­go. It al­so shows the lev­el of con­fi­dence that British Air­ways has in the Port-of- Spain route.”  

Mitchell said the min­istry's da­ta shows British Air­ways brings an av­er­age of 217 pas­sen­gers every week to Trinidad.  

“Based on the ca­pac­i­ty of the air­craft, that is a load fac­tor of al­most 70 per cent and a high­er av­er­age base fare than the route in­to St. Lu­cia. Giv­en these facts, we see this as an ad­van­tage and gives us more lat­i­tude to di­rect­ly tar­get those mar­kets who can now ac­cess our is­land and what we have to of­fer that much eas­i­er.” 

Al­so an­nounced to­day was the British car­ri­er’s in­ten­tion to serve two new routes - Oran­jes­tad, Aru­ba (AUA) and George­town, Guyana (GEO).  Flights from Oran­jes­tad, Aru­ba to Lon­don will op­er­ate twice week­ly from 26 March 2023, via An­tigua. Flights from George­town, Guyana to Lon­don op­er­ate twice week­ly, via St Lu­cia, from 27 March 2023. Pre­vi­ous­ly cus­tomers fly­ing in­to Guyana were rout­ed through the USA via BA’s part­ner air­line Amer­i­can Air­lines. 

Flights are op­er­at­ed us­ing the air­line’s Boe­ing 777-200 air­craft. British Air­ways now serves 17 Caribbean des­ti­na­tions.