Panday criticises proposed airbridge fare increase

AKASH SAMA­ROO

Lead Ed­i­tor – Pol­i­tics

Pa­tri­ot­ic Front po­lit­i­cal leader Mick­ela Pan­day says cit­i­zens are fac­ing fur­ther fi­nan­cial strain as the Gov­ern­ment weighs a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in do­mes­tic air­fares.

On Thurs­day, Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Min­is­ter Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj re­vealed that mem­bers of the pub­lic could pay from $960 to $1,000 to trav­el be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go via Caribbean Air­lines un­der peak-pe­ri­od pric­ing, as the Gov­ern­ment con­sid­ers a pro­posed plan to in­tro­duce un­sub­sidised flights on the do­mes­tic air­bridge.

In a state­ment to­day, Pan­day said the pro­pos­al would deep­en the fi­nan­cial bur­den on cit­i­zens al­ready grap­pling with ris­ing costs.

“Every­thing go­ing up ex­cept op­por­tu­ni­ty,” she said, point­ing to what she de­scribed as “in­creas­ing house­hold pres­sure, new charges and a wors­en­ing cost of liv­ing.”

Pan­day ques­tioned the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for high­er fares, cit­ing Caribbean Air­lines’ re­cent fi­nan­cial per­for­mance. The air­line record­ed an op­er­at­ing prof­it of US$12.1 mil­lion in 2024, fol­low­ing US$24.7 mil­lion in 2023, while act­ing CEO Var­ma Khillawan re­port­ed that first-quar­ter 2026 prof­itabil­i­ty in­creased by 66 per cent year-on-year to ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$9 mil­lion.

“So, the ques­tion fac­ing every cit­i­zen is sim­ple, if the air­line is re­cov­er­ing, why are the peo­ple be­ing asked to pay more?” she asked.

She warned that the pro­posed in­crease—from rough­ly $400 to as much as $1,000 for re­turn fares dur­ing peak pe­ri­ods—would have wide-reach­ing im­pli­ca­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly for To­bag­o­ni­ans.

“To­ba­go is not a for­eign des­ti­na­tion. The air­bridge is not a lux­u­ry. It is an es­sen­tial na­tion­al ser­vice,” Pan­day said.

She ar­gued that for To­bag­o­ni­ans, the air­bridge pro­vides crit­i­cal ac­cess to em­ploy­ment, health­care, ed­u­ca­tion, bank­ing and gov­ern­ment ser­vices, while for Trinida­di­ans it fa­cil­i­tates fam­i­ly trav­el, busi­ness and tourism.

“The over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty of To­ba­go’s vis­i­tors come from Trinidad. When trav­el be­comes un­af­ford­able, To­ba­go’s econ­o­my suf­fers,” she said.

Pan­day al­so ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of fail­ing to de­liv­er mean­ing­ful re­lief af­ter years in Op­po­si­tion.

“Near­ly 10 years in Op­po­si­tion should have pro­duced vi­sion, sound pol­i­cy and readi­ness to gov­ern. In­stead, it has pro­duced pun­ish­ment for the peo­ple,” she said.

She added that a more ef­fec­tive ap­proach would fo­cus on im­prov­ing op­er­a­tions rather than in­creas­ing costs.

“A com­pe­tent Gov­ern­ment would re­duce waste, im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy, ex­pand ca­pac­i­ty, mod­ernise op­er­a­tions and keep trav­el af­ford­able,” Pan­day said.

She added: “Lead­er­ship is not mea­sured by how much more you can charge the peo­ple. Lead­er­ship is mea­sured by how well you can serve them.”