St Lucia: REDjet could start flying there in October

CASTRIES, St Lucia, CMC – The Barbados-based, discount airline, REDjet, is to begin flights into St Lucia from as early as October, Tourism and Civil Aviation Minister Senator Allen Chastanet announced here Friday, even as he attempted to broker the carrier’s links between the Eastern Caribbean and Panama.



“A couple months ago, REDjet applied for entry into the market and permission was granted for the St Lucia-Barbados route,” Chastanet told the Caribbean Media Corporation.



“We have also had meetings in Panana with REDjet with the idea of getting REDjet to operate into Panama both out of St. Lucia and Barbados, and those meetings from which I have just returned have gone very well,” Chastanet added.



He said his visit to Panama also involved talks with COPA Airlines, and hoped that REDjet will begin operations into the Hewanorra International Airport in the southern city of Vieux Fort.



The Barbados-based carrier, which began flying to Guyana, added Trinidad to its schedule on July 28 and is set to fly to Jamaica in October, has been granted permission to fly to St Kitts. Grenada and Dominica have also been wooing the carrier to add their destinations.



Chastanet, who has been a staunch critic of the inter-island airline LIAT, criticised the airline’s reliance on the turboprop Bombardier Dash 8-300, more popularly known as the Dash 8. The Dash 8s fly to the St Lucian capital as the George FL Charles airport cannot accommodate large passenger jets, like the McDonnell-Douglas MD-82s that REDjet uses.



“I have also questioned the fact that LIAT continues to use Dash 8s to service St. Lucians who have to fly to Barbados to go to St. Vincent, or Dominicans seeking to do business here having to fly first to Antigua or Barbados before getting here. This really means that LIAT is not serving the region well at all,” the minister, a former Air Jamaica executive, told CMC.



Chastanet said that while he does not expect REDjet to solve these problems given the fact that it is using jets, the company is certainly in a position to fly into Panama and Jamaica, two markets not now linked to St Lucia.



LIAT, the main connecting airline in the Eastern Caribbean, is owned by the governments of Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda and St Vincent and the Grenadines.