Cayman Airways eyes two more new routes as 1,200 book their Panama seats

As Cayman Airways prepares to relaunch its Panama route in June, CEO and President Fabian Whorms has said the national carrier has its sights set on adding two more new routes to the airline’s schedule.

Whorms, speaking on the Cayman Compass’s Wednesday lunchtime talkshow ‘The Resh Hour’, said the airline is looking into one new gateway for travellers starting as soon as this winter.

“We have some capacity in our schedule to take on, certainly this year, another gateway. So we’re targeting a gateway for the winter season… we’ll be announcing that later on. I wouldn’t want to say what it is because it’s actually not fully decided,” Whorms said.

He said, in addition, CAL is also looking at “marrying that with a new summer gateway as well”.

Though Whorms said he cannot announce anything concrete at this stage, he suggested that the new gateways would be seasonal.

He said the winter gateway will be announced later this year. The summer route could be revealed then, as well.

Decisions to ‘benefit Cayman’

Meanwhile, the discussion and analysis about potential routes continues.

“We don’t go into it blind,” he said, adding that the airline works very closely with the Department of Tourism, the Ministry of Tourism and the minister’s vision.

“We’re doing this for strategic reasons… whatever we do it’s not for Cayman Airways, it’s what will benefit Cayman,” he said.

Determining the selection of the routes, he said, involves research into where the tourists are coming from and looking at “hot spots”. These are zip codes or states where passengers are already coming to Cayman, usually via at least one stop en route.

This, he said, provides “an opportunity for us now to put in a direct flight and then that market will grow”.

This way, when the route becomes available, the airline know’s there’s “already 10,000…. 15,000 people already coming to the Cayman Islands from that area”.

Perry Panton, who also appeared on the show, reminded that Cayman Airways has the most modern fleet within the region to advance such changes.

Whorms pointed that the airline will also get to a point where it might not have the capacity to take on any further gateways.

“So then you might start to see us cutting back on some [routes], because it’s all a matter of opportunity cost… it’s nice to fly to Tampa five days a week, but maybe it might suit the country more to fly to Tampa only four days a week and put a flight on somewhere else,” Whorms said.

Panama flights selling

Whorms, speaking to the reintroduction of the Panama route on 26 June, said, he is ” very satisfied” in terms of ticket sales.

“We’ve actually surprised ourselves. We’ve already sold 1,200 seats. The aircraft has a 160 seat capacity. So, that’s already indicating several flights, especially in the month of July, where we’re going to have very high load factors and we’re several months out,” he said.

The Panama route, he said, serves a combination of tourism, local leisure and business travellers, which suits the schedule, will runs on a Monday and a Thursday.

“It fits in because we have the capacity on those days. When we did it before, it was a strain. And something had to give and it would not have benefited the Cayman Islands for us to give up Dallas to continue to do Panama,” Whorms said.

Though Panton said he won’t pilot the first flight to the Central American country himself, he said he has been heavily involved in training the pilots who will be doing that route, as well as the remainder of the Cayman Airways destinations.

LA loads ‘not off the charts’

Whorms, speaking on the introduction of the LA route, said, it will take some time to see the gateway develop.

“The loads don’t just start on day one,” he said, adding that, the airline is also in a brand new market where it had no visibility before.

“So the more we provide service and the more customers have a good experience, the more we drive repeat customers, the more attention will be paid to Cayman Airways from that particular gateway or the LA region,” he said.

Whorms said the word is out in LA and already the airline is “the preferred way to get to the Cayman Islands” and it has been “very well received”.

The route, he said, is performing well and while the loads “may not be off the charts” the business class section of the cabin is always generally, very heavily booked.

“That’s where we garner the most revenue. So at the end of the day it’s not the number of passengers, it’s the revenue that we generate in order to be able to cover the cost. So we’re very happy with that, again it’s early days,” Whorms said.

Denver, he said, is probably the airline’s best performing route right now.