Air Canada is set to resume flights to the Cayman Islands on 1 May, Tourism Minister Kenneth Bryan has confirmed.
Bryan, speaking on the Cayman Compass Facebook talkshow The Resh Hour on Wednesday night, said the Canadian flag carrier has committed to weekly flights starting next month.
“We’re so happy to announce that as of May 1 Air Canada will be coming back every Sunday on a weekly basis… I just got that update so I’m happy to share that,” Bryan said.
He pointed out that there is a large population of Canadians in Cayman who will welcome the news.
“We’ve always had a good relationship with Canada in respect to visitor numbers. So we’re really happy that the national flag carrier is committed to coming by and going back again; more numbers for our stayover [sector], so we are excited,” Bryan said.
Back in January, Air Canada announced that it was suspending 14 of its Caribbean routes, including to Grand Cayman, until at least the end of April, in light of a surge in COVID-19 cases and associated government regulations in the region.
The suspension of routes began on 24 Jan., Air Canada stated in a travel advisory on its website on Wednesday, 5 Jan.
The Canadian airline had resumed flights to the Cayman Islands in December, and was operating two flights a week between Grand Cayman and Toronto on its Air Canada Rouge service.
At present, only WestJet offers direct flights to Canada.
Looking at the current airlift schedules, Bryan said the carriers operating here have not ramped up their offerings just yet.
He said at the end of the ‘spring break period’, the airlines will make their assessments on the rest of their flights.
Bryan explained that travel operates in three seasonal blocks with the first block nearing its end, so by the end of April to the first week in May the public may see carriers add more dates.
“I suspect that as the world slowly gets over COVID that will naturally happen anyway. So you have that element as well as the element of the seasonality. It’s early days to say whether you’re going to see any major numbers,” Bryan said, adding that online portals for the various airlines flying to Cayman show “a good robust number of flights coming in”.
He added that he suspects that is “only bound to increase”.
“It is early days to say whether it’s going to increase tenfold or 20 in the next block after the spring break period,” he said.
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Minister Bryan says that there are “a good robust number of flights coming in”, and that tourism is “only bound to increase” after the spring break period.
I would submit to him the observation that by May 1, the winter tourism season is OVER. Since last November, many tourists have expressed (in comments to the Compass) that they were fed up with all the delays and government regulations and that they would be traveling elsewhere for their winter vacations and would likely not return. Also add to this that the government sees “no end in sight” for discontinuing the Travel Cayman approval process required by the government for tourists to visit.
Yet he continues with this pie-in-the-sky optimism that “It is early days to say whether it’s going to increase tenfold or 20 in the next block after the spring break period.” I think he’ll be lucky if it doubles.