Brent Pin­heiro

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

KLM Roy­al Dutch Air­lines con­tin­ues to show con­fi­dence in Des­ti­na­tion T&T with plans to dou­ble flights to Port of Spain, Trinidad for the Win­ter 2024/25 sea­son. Start­ing Oc­to­ber 27th, KLM is set to fly 6x week­ly – up from 3x week­ly – from Am­s­ter­dam (AMS) to Port of Spain (POS) via Sint Maarten (SXM).

The tri­an­gle route con­tin­ues every day ex­cept Sat­ur­days un­til March 28th, 2024, with ad­just­ed flight tim­ings. KL0777 de­parts Am­s­ter­dam at 10:35 am and ar­rives in POS at 6:05 pm af­ter a brief stop in Sint Maarten. The re­turn leg is non­stop to AMS, de­part­ing POS at 7:30 pm and ar­riv­ing at 9:30 am the next day.

The AMS-POS ser­vice has been per­form­ing well since its re-in­tro­duc­tion in Oc­to­ber 2021 af­ter an ab­sence of al­most 30 years. Pop­u­lar with na­tion­als, vis­i­tors from Benelux re­gion, vis­i­tors from Asia, and pas­sen­gers util­is­ing the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port to con­nect to oth­er parts of the Caribbean and in­to South Amer­i­ca, av­er­age load fac­tors have steadi­ly in­creased.

In 2022, the ser­vice record­ed an av­er­age load fac­tor of 75% and 80% for 2023. From Jan­u­ary to March 2024, the av­er­age load fac­tor has seen a fur­ther in­crease to around 92%. When KLM op­er­ates its Air­bus A330 on the AMS-POS route, it al­lo­cates up to 60% of the 293 seats to Trinidad and 40% to Sint Maarten. A 92% av­er­age load fac­tor rep­re­sents ap­prox­i­mate­ly 161 seats are filled for Trinidad. Ear­li­er this year, KLM tem­porar­i­ly in­creased ser­vice by up to 5 week­ly flights dur­ing the car­ni­val pe­ri­od but re­sumed a 3x week­ly sched­ule short­ly af­ter­wards.

On Mon­day, Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell told Guardian Me­dia that he and his team ad­vo­cat­ed for an in­crease in ser­vice in Jan­u­ary 2023 when they met with KLM of­fi­cials in the Nether­lands. At the time, the air­line ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion with the route’s per­for­mance say­ing that it ‘per­formed above their ex­pec­ta­tions’. Mitchell says since then the air­line “has seen it fit to place ad­di­tion­al ser­vices on this route” as it ex­pe­ri­ences growth.

Ac­cord­ing to Mitchell, the route’s pop­u­lar­i­ty lies in the “con­ve­nience of us­ing KLM’s Schiphol hub in Eu­rope, (an) in­crease in busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty, and the hunger for trav­el and ex­pe­ri­ences.”

Con­dor con­tin­ues To­ba­go ser­vice 

The To­ba­go Tourism Agency Lim­it­ed (TTAL) is in the process of fi­nal­is­ing arrange­ments to have Ger­man leisure car­ri­er, Con­dor con­tin­ue to fly to To­ba­go for Win­ter 2024/25. The air­line will op­er­ate a 1x week­ly ser­vice from Frank­furt, Ger­many non­stop to To­ba­go on Tues­days. Like KLM, Con­dor op­er­ates this ser­vice on a tri­an­gle route - the re­turn flight stops in Bridgetown, Bar­ba­dos be­fore con­tin­u­ing on to Frank­furt. This is Con­dor’s sec­ond win­ter sea­son fly­ing to To­ba­go post-pan­dem­ic.

A spokesper­son for Con­dor told Guardian Me­dia, “The Caribbean is­lands are im­por­tant des­ti­na­tions with­in the Con­dor route net­work. This in­cludes To­ba­go which is part of the sea­son­al Con­dor win­ter flight sched­ule 2024/25 and will be op­er­at­ed week­ly on Tues­days next win­ter.”

TTAL Mar­ket­ing and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Di­rec­tor, Ja­son An­toine de­scribed the part­ner­ship as “sig­nif­i­cant for To­ba­go’s tourism in­dus­try” and said, “the Agency ap­pre­ci­ates the con­nec­tiv­i­ty and ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty pro­vid­ed by Con­dor Air­lines for trav­ellers to our beau­ti­ful des­ti­na­tion.

Con­dor will use its A330-900neo fleet on the route.