Arajet Airlines eyes 2028/2029 for scheduled flights to Trinidad

BRENT PIN­HEIRO

Pro­duc­er

brent.pin­[email protected]

Three years ago, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic’s civ­il avi­a­tion board, the Jun­ta de Aviación Civ­il (JAC), grant­ed ul­tra-low-cost car­ri­er Ara­jet Air­lines per­mis­sion to op­er­ate flights be­tween the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Ear­li­er this year, Trinidad and To­ba­go signed an Air Ser­vices Agree­ment with the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, clear­ing the way for sched­uled flights. How­ev­er, de­spite hav­ing per­mis­sion to op­er­ate the route, Ara­jet says the ear­li­est it could be­gin sched­uled flights to Trinidad is 2028.

Re­spond­ing to a ques­tion from Guardian Me­dia at the Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean Air Trans­port As­so­ci­a­tion (AL­TA) AGM and Air­line Lead­ers Fo­rum in Mex­i­co City, Ara­jet chief com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer Manuel Lu­na said the air­line would not launch a route to Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port (POS) any time soon, as it was await­ing de­liv­ery of ad­di­tion­al air­craft from man­u­fac­tur­er Boe­ing.

“Once we get more planes from Boe­ing, we are go­ing to be more open to open­ing routes like the one in Trinidad, but that is not go­ing to be hap­pen­ing in 2027,” Lu­na said.

“If that hap­pens, it’s prob­a­bly some­thing that is go­ing to hap­pen be­tween 2028 and 2029,” he added.

Ara­jet cur­rent­ly has 16 Boe­ing 737 MAX 8 air­craft in ac­tive ser­vice.

In the mean­time, the air­line is fo­cused on con­sol­i­dat­ing its ex­ist­ing Latin Amer­i­can mar­kets. It cur­rent­ly serves 30 des­ti­na­tions in 17 coun­tries and plans to ex­pand its US op­er­a­tions in 2027, po­ten­tial­ly open­ing new routes along the US East Coast and in the cen­tral part of the coun­try.

The air­line is al­so await­ing reg­u­la­to­ry clear­ance to launch flights to Venezuela as ear­ly as March next year.

Ara­jet has record­ed strong growth in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean. In 2022, the air­line car­ried just 7,000 pas­sen­gers be­tween Ja­maica and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic. By the end of 2026, that fig­ure is pro­ject­ed to reach 72,000.

Over­all, the air­line ex­pects to car­ry more than three mil­lion pas­sen­gers this year and a sim­i­lar num­ber next year.

How­ev­er, Lu­na ac­knowl­edged that the air­line was op­er­at­ing in a chal­leng­ing en­vi­ron­ment, with el­e­vat­ed fu­el prices af­fect­ing its abil­i­ty to achieve prof­itabil­i­ty.

Cit­ing strong sales fig­ures for Sep­tem­ber, which were 25 per cent high­er than in­ter­nal pro­jec­tions, Lu­na said the com­pa­ny would al­ready have been prof­itable were it not for the con­flict.

While the avi­a­tion in­dus­try hopes for a swift end to the US-Iran con­flict and a sub­se­quent de­cline in fu­el prices, Lu­na said Ara­jet’s mis­sion re­mained un­changed: to con­nect the Amer­i­c­as to the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.