Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Hun­dreds of mas­quer­aders who feared they would miss To­ba­go Car­ni­val be­cause they could not se­cure flights to the is­land may now get to take part in the fes­ti­val, as Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine an­nounced that Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) has added more than 3,000 seats to the do­mes­tic air­bridge.

Band­lead­ers had raised an alarm over the past week, say­ing their mas­quer­aders had paid for cos­tumes but had no flights to To­ba­go. Many warned of se­vere fi­nan­cial fall­out, in­clud­ing pos­si­ble re­funds and can­cel­la­tions if the is­sue was not re­solved be­fore the Oc­to­ber 25–27 cel­e­bra­tions.

Au­gus­tine said the mat­ter was treat­ed ur­gent­ly.

“I must say thanks to Min­is­ter (Dav­en­dranath) Tan­coo and the board. I did some in­ter­ven­tion on the mat­ter. I think just over 3,000 seats were added, 3,000 plus seats were added,” he told re­porters yes­ter­day af­ter the han­dover of sar­gas­sum sea­weed equip­ment from the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme at the Shaw Park Cul­tur­al Com­plex.

“A re­lease will go out lat­er to­day, but the band­lead­ers were able to se­cure the seats for their bands. I think they are now pay­ing for their tick­ets and so on, be­cause there are band­lead­ers who had mas­quer­aders with­out flights to the is­land.”

In a re­lease last evening, the Of­fice of the Chief Sec­re­tary con­firmed 3,200 ad­di­tion­al seats sup­ple­ment­ing the ex­ist­ing 18,792 seats to get to the is­land for the Car­ni­val sea­son.

The new flights were loaded in­to CAL’s book­ing sys­tem be­tween Mon­day night and Tues­day morn­ing. The move comes af­ter pub­lic crit­i­cism of the air­line and con­cerns that the lack of flights would have a neg­a­tive im­pact on To­ba­go Car­ni­val, one of the is­land’s grow­ing eco­nom­ic at­trac­tions.

Au­gus­tine said the in­ter­ven­tion be­gan weeks ago.

“We did not meet phys­i­cal­ly. So, I wrote Caribbean Air­lines since last month. But I wrote the min­is­ter since last month, be­fore he pre­sent­ed the bud­get. So we just fol­lowed it up with tele­phone calls,” he said.

CAL had been un­der pres­sure from the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) and tourism stake­hold­ers for not plan­ning enough flight ca­pac­i­ty for the event, de­spite fore­casts show­ing in­creased trav­el de­mand.

Au­gus­tine made it clear that the THA does not want to solve To­ba­go’s air­lift prob­lems on a case-by-case ba­sis any­more. He said a per­ma­nent sys­tem must be put in place to han­dle high pas­sen­ger traf­fic dur­ing peak sea­sons.

“I have al­so asked that they work ear­ly in 2026,” he said. “So that through­out the year, when there’s a high traf­fic pe­ri­od, it shouldn’t be every time there’s a high traf­fic pe­ri­od, the Chief Sec­re­tary must write or call some­body.” He said CAL must an­tic­i­pate de­mand and in­tro­duce flights in ad­vance. “I want them to work it out for the en­tire year,” he said.

Mean­while, the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (TH­TA) said while the ex­tra flights bring re­lief, the sit­u­a­tion is a se­ri­ous weak­ness in To­ba­go’s trans­port plan­ning.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, the as­so­ci­a­tion said the is­land can­not con­tin­ue to de­pend on last-minute fix­es by gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and must es­tab­lish a for­mal year-round air­lift strat­e­gy.

The as­so­ci­a­tion said To­ba­go’s econ­o­my de­pends on re­li­able ac­cess and warned that re­peat­ing the same pat­tern of cri­sis man­age­ment will con­tin­ue to dam­age trav­eller con­fi­dence, event plan­ning, and in­vest­ment in the is­land’s tourism prod­uct.