Barbados-based Director of Peach and Quiet Ltd, columnist and author, Adrian Loveridge has encouraged LIAT to make better use of its seating capacity by offering affordable deals to customers.
“They operate a lot of flights which were operating with eight, nine, ten people on them… Use revenue capacity to fill those seats. Make those available at a lower price with an ITX fare that a travel agent or a tour operator can package,” he said, on Tuesday, at the first Caribbean Aviation Meetup, held at the Fort Young Hotel.
He advised that the regional airline should liaise with persons in the hospitality industry, in order to customize appealing packages, which would benefit all parties involved.
Loveridge insisted that tourism officials “need to sit down as a collective tourism entity with LIAT, to go through with them—if they’re going to continue to operate, then we’ve got to work with them, because we don’t, at the moment, have too many other choices.”
Meantime, he stated that Dominica may stand to benefit from a deal made between Delta Airlines and Canadian aircraft manufacturer, Bombardier, in April 2016, whereby the latter is expected to supply the airline with 75 aircraft from the C-Series (namely the CS100 and CS300), with an option for another 50.
The Bombardier C-Series is a family of narrow-body, twin-engine, medium-range jet airliners being developed by Canadian Bombardier Aerospace.
The aircraft, expected to be completed next year, will contain high usage of composite materials, and larger windows. The cabin will feature large, rotating overhead storage bins, allowing each passenger more overhead storage space. The C-Series is also to provide a wider aisle, to facilitate faster boarding and disembarkation of passengers.
Loveridge articulated that the planes’ ability to land and take off on a 4,000 runway would be of particular interest to islands like Dominica which have smaller runways.
“The most important thing that may affect many people in this room directly, [is that] it can land and take off on a 4,000 feet runway; and it’s the only plane of its kind that can do that,” he said. “If I understand it correctly, Douglas-Charles Airport has a runway length of 5,700 and a bit.”
He urged Dominican authorities to “seriously look at” enticing at least one Delta flight, in order to fill existing hotels and the new hotels expected to be constructed on the island. The Caribbean Aviation Meetup’s three-day program includes a wide range of topics, to facilitate discussion on changes for improved airlift in the Caribbean, and its impact on tourism and the economy.