Farley hails late-night CAL flights as win for Tobago

Brent Pin­heiro 

brent.pin­[email protected] 

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine is to­day cel­e­brat­ing Caribbean Air­lines’ de­ci­sion to re-in­tro­duce a late-night do­mes­tic flight be­tween Trinidad & To­ba­go. 

On Mon­day evening, CAL an­nounced via so­cial me­dia that it would re­sume its late-night flight be­tween the is­lands - a ser­vice that has not op­er­at­ed since the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. 

Ef­fec­tive Ju­ly 1st, the dai­ly flight leaves Trinidad at 11:30 pm and ar­rives in To­ba­go at 11:55 pm. The re­turn flight de­parts To­ba­go at 12:30 am, ar­riv­ing back in Trinidad at 12:55 am.  

The sus­pen­sion of the ser­vice has been some­what of a sore point for To­ba­go of­fi­cials over the past few years and was one of the mat­ters dis­cussed when Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Au­gus­tine met on May 27th.

The Prime Min­is­ter lat­er con­firmed it was some­thing the gov­ern­ment was look­ing in­to. How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to a To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) re­lease, the re­quest was on­ly for­mal­ly made on June 27th by To­ba­go East MP David Thomas and To­ba­go West MP Joel Samp­son.  

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions sent via What­sApp, Au­gus­tine tells Guardian Me­dia it has been a long time com­ing. “We have asked. We have begged. We have plead­ed. We have been on our knees and fi­nal­ly, the peo­ple have to be able to de­cide. We will vote about it and we vot­ed about it,” he says, adding “We are hap­py for this very ear­ly win and we see that there will be a need for per­haps an ad­di­tion­al late-night flight, but we are very grate­ful that it is re­sum­ing. This is an ear­ly win.” 

Tourism, Cul­ture, An­tiq­ui­ties and Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Tashia Bur­ris tells Guardian Me­dia it's a “move in the right di­rec­tion”. She says it’s a “much-need­ed con­nec­tion for those in­ter­na­tion­al and do­mes­tic pas­sen­gers need­ing to tran­sit to To­ba­go late in the evening. It is my hope that this is the be­gin­ning of the re­turn of all our do­mes­tic pre-Covid flights as well as a pre­cur­sor to more di­rect con­nec­tions to To­ba­go.” 

Au­gus­tine al­so tout­ed the ben­e­fits of the night ser­vice say­ing, “These flights al­low for gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials in­clud­ing se­nior pub­lic ser­vants hav­ing en­gage­ments in Trinidad, not hav­ing to overnight once the en­gage­ment oc­curs af­ter 6 pm. It al­lows Tri­nis wish­ing to en­joy the en­ter­tain­ment scenes in To­ba­go to be able to take a late flight and reach on time to their par­ties or event and then back to Trinidad the next day with­out need­ing a room.” Ac­cord­ing to Au­gus­tine, this will bring more par­tic­i­pa­tion in To­ba­go Car­ni­val and oth­er events and aid in To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic turn­around. 

But as hap­py as he is for the win, Au­gus­tine is ready for Caribbean Air­lines to do more than just ser­vice the air­bridge be­tween Trinidad & To­ba­go. “Just un­der a year ago or about a year ago, we start­ed ne­go­ti­a­tions with Caribbean Air­lines for a di­rect Toron­to to To­ba­go flight,” he re­vealed. “We had an agree­ment every­thing and be­cause of the pol­i­tics in Trinidad, Caribbean Air­lines was in­struct­ed not to car­ry out the deal... I'm hope­ful that now that pol­i­tics have changed and To­bag­o­ni­ans have vot­ed a dif­fer­ent way that Caribbean Air­lines will al­so re­vis­it that ini­tial agree­ment that we had for that di­rect flight,” he added.