REDjet announces profit after 3 months

The Caribbean's only low-fare carrier, REDjet, says it has made a profit on the Guyana-to-Barbados route, three months after it launched the service.

"What we have achieved is that we broke even within four weeks of starting our operations on the Guyana-Barbados route, and within seven weeks (we) were profitable, that is ... a remarkable performance," the airline's chief executive officer, Ian Burns, told a news conference.

The Barbados-based airline, which had been experiencing problems launching its services to Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica, on Thursday made its inaugural flight to Piarco International Airport in Port-of-Spain.

Burns said his company would be pushing for an open-skies agreement throughout the region so as to make intra-regional travel affordable.

Regional integration

"REDjet's goals are that, through CARICOM, a true open-skies agreement will exist on a multilateral level and not just on a bilateral basis.

"While we are a private-company and we are taking well-measured and deliberate steps in our route planning and development, we see regional integration at the forefront of REDjet's long-term strategy, focusing on ways to open markets, open doors to more people for the lowest-possible fare, while operating under a safe and reliable framework so that everyone can fly."

He told reporters that, since REDjet made its entrance on the regional market, air fares had dropped by almost 72 per cent on the routes where it is providing competition for other regional airlines.

"We promised people, when we came here, lower fares, the best on-time performance and the least amount of lost bags," he said.

"What we have done is to create options for people to travel; over 38 per cent of passengers are saving money because they are not checking in bags and using their free-baggage allowance. All of this adds up to saying that REDjet is the most popular airline in the Caribbean and that we have changed an entire market within a number of weeks."

Burns predicts that REDjet will add 750,000 low-fare seats throughout the Caribbean over the next 12 months, and that more and more people will travel around the region as a result.

"The myth that REDjet will kill somebody is just nonsense, because we can't cope with the demand, because we cannot cope with the capacity.

"People that want to travel will have to use other airlines, and those other airlines will have to step up to the plate and give the customers what they desire," Burns added.

- CMC