InterCaribbean boosts Trinidad–Barbados capacity ahead of Carnival

Brent Pin­heiro

brent.pin­[email protected]

Turks and Caicos-based air­line In­ter­Caribbean Air­ways is set to in­crease its ser­vice to T&T from four week­ly flights to dai­ly flights.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on the side­lines of the Caribbean Tourism Or­ga­ni­za­tion’s State of the Tourism In­dus­try Con­fer­ence in George­town, Guyana, on Wednes­day, In­ter­Caribbean Air­ways CEO Trevor Sadler said the air­line had been do­ing well since it be­gan fly­ing to Port of Spain in March this year and was now prepar­ing for the up­com­ing Car­ni­val sea­son.

“The load fac­tors have been very pos­i­tive, par­tic­u­lar­ly over the sum­mer, and now we’re al­ready get­ting ready to add some in­ven­to­ry on that ba­sis. Car­ni­val comes around in Feb­ru­ary, and his­to­ry has al­ready told us that this is a very high-de­mand mo­ment,” he said.

To meet the pro­ject­ed de­mand, the air­line will re­place the Em­braer ERJ-145 cur­rent­ly ser­vic­ing the route with the com­pa­ny’s new­er 76-seat Em­braer E170 air­craft. Ac­cord­ing to Sadler, this will add ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50 per cent more seats.

Us­ing the E170s is part prac­ti­cal and part strate­gic as In­ter­Caribbean nav­i­gates an op­er­at­ing en­vi­ron­ment in which high jet fu­el prices, dri­ven by the US-Iran war, are af­fect­ing its abil­i­ty to of­fer af­ford­able fares.

In­ter­Caribbean does not hedge fu­el prices, in­stead choos­ing to buy fu­el at the mar­ket price on the day. How­ev­er, Sadler said the air­line’s lo­ca­tion had worked in its favour.

“We’re more for­tu­nate in the Caribbean than, say, be­ing in Eu­rope with re­spect to fu­el pric­ing. We re­ly heav­i­ly on the US as the source mar­ket for much of the fu­el,” he said.

Jet fu­el prices are high­er in Eu­rope be­cause of the con­flict and sup­ply dis­rup­tions. How­ev­er, prices can fluc­tu­ate de­pend­ing on the geopo­lit­i­cal events of the day. Sadler said this re­quired dai­ly mon­i­tor­ing to avoid plac­ing a “fur­ther bur­den” on pas­sen­gers.

De­spite the high fu­el prices, In­ter­Caribbean’s ex­pan­sion plans re­main on track.

Sadler said that, as long as the com­pa­ny re­mained prac­ti­cal, the new­er air­craft of­fered an op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­ter new mar­kets and ex­pand con­nec­tiv­i­ty op­tions.

Man­age­ment is al­so con­sid­er­ing in­tro­duc­ing a pre­mi­um on­board prod­uct, a move that would bring the air­line more in line with many in­ter­na­tion­al car­ri­ers.

“We’ve con­cep­tu­alised what we think is pos­si­ble as a start­ing point where it doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly in­volve any cab­in re­con­fig­u­ra­tion or, you know, ex­pen­sive changes, mov­ing bins and so forth,” he said.

He added: “We haven’t an­nounced or launched, but we’re ac­tive­ly look­ing at what’s the propo­si­tion that we can of­fer as a pre­mi­um cab­in, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the Em­braer 170 air­craft.”