REDjet expanding routes to include Antigua, Trinidad to Guyana

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC - The new regional budget airline, REDjet, on Tuesday announced it was expanding its service to Antigua and began selling tickets for flights between Trinidad and Guyana, just days after securing licences under the terms of a bilateral 'open-skies' air services agreement.



CEO Ian Burns told Antigua’s Daily Observer that the Antiguan authorities have granted REDjet permission to begin flights to St John’s. The airline plans to inaugurate a direct Antigua-Guyana route "by around early October", the paper said.



“We are delighted. Antigua is a very important part of the Eastern Caribbean and is like a little hub in itself,” the Observer quoted him as saying.



“We are excited about flying there. We would like to develop some more routes out of there as well. We would see Antigua as a starting point and we hopefully would be going into bigger destinations,” he added.



The announcement of the Antigua approval comes on the day the fledgling carrier began selling seats on a new Trinidad-Guyana service.



Antigua is home to a significant Guyanese immigrant worker population.



Last week, the Trinidad and Tobago Civil Aviation Authority granted the airline licences to operate scheduled services to and from Port of Spain, Trinidad, to Georgetown, Guyana, and Kingston, Jamaica, as intermediate and points beyond Trinidad and Tobago, the airline said.



The licences were granted in keeping an ‘open-skies’ agreement between Port of Spain and Bridgetown that allows for mutual recognition of carriers and automatic permission for air services between and beyond their respective territories.



It was the same agreement that was at the centre of the dispute between the Barbados-based carrier and the Trinidadian and Jamaican governments as it struggled to get approval after announcing its plans to fly these routes in May.



The airline, which operates 27-year-old McDonnell-Douglas MD-82 jets out of its Barbados hub, began flying between Bridgetown and Guyana. St Lucia is the latest country to announce it has granted approval to the airline, joining St Kitts and Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica.



REDjet’s critics have suggested that its 9.99 US-dollar fares were unrealistic and a gimmick that amounted to unfair competition against the island-hopping, turboprop carrier LIAT and the Trinidad-Jamaica alliance carrier, Caribbean Airlines.



But Burns stressed that it had long stated that only 15 per cent of the 149 seats were available at that price, and increases by ten-dollar increments with each day closer to the departure date and as demand grows.



“We promised that and we are honouring that commitment,” he told the Daily Observer. “We have been very open and explained to people how our fare structure works.”