Opposition questions financial sense of new Barbados route

The Progressives Opposition is questioning if Cayman Airways’ newly announced direct route to Barbados and a second weekly flight to Los Angeles are financially viable, and whether other more potentially profitable routes should have been considered.

The Opposition issued a statement Monday in response to Tourism Minister Kenneth Bryan’s announcement of the new flights, calling for more transparency on the decision behind launching the Barbados route.

While acknowledging that the twice-weekly Barbados flight, which is expected to launch on 18 Oct., will make travel between the Cayman Islands, Barbados, and the eastern Caribbean more accessible and enhance inter-region travel between islands, the Opposition, in its statement, said several questions regarding the decision “remained unanswered”.

Officials explained at the press briefing Monday at which the new route was announced that Cayman’s national airline would be putting on a second flight to Los Angeles in the middle of the week to accommodate travellers arriving from Barbados to connect to the LAX flight.

“Worryingly, the Minister and CAL are proposing to start the flights during the slow season in October,” Leader of the Opposition Roy McTaggart said in the statement. “This certainly seems detrimental to the viability and success of this second flight to LA. It does not seem like a business decision that CAL would usually take. This appears to have been acknowledged by the CAL Chairman [John-Paul Clarke], who said that he and the CAL board were not initially planning to provide a second flight at this time. But the partnership with Barbados was the impetus for starting in October.”

McTaggart continued, “We are also sceptical about Minister Bryan’s hope that many UK and European (EU) tourists will travel to the Cayman Islands via Barbados. The Minister did indicate that increasing arrivals from the UK and the EU would be a key measure for him as to the success of the new route for the Cayman Islands. We will see in the coming months how well the Barbados connection with the UK and, indeed, the second LA flight performs for the Cayman Islands and CAL.”

He called on the government to answer two questions: “First, does a proposed new air route pose any undue increased financial or other risks to CAL and the Cayman Islands Government? And second, is there an alternative and more profitable route for CAL and the Cayman Islands that better uses CAL’s aircraft?”

Asked at the press briefing about the cost-sharing of the new route with Barbados, Bryan said he could not disclose the financial arrangement as he was prohibited under the contract agreement that had been signed, but stated that the “Cayman Islands will not lose out in any capacity”.

McTaggart and the Opposition also raised concerns that, based on what was stated at the press briefing, Barbados “had not provided their marketing data/route analysis for CAL to consider when deciding on the route – including the viability of the second LA flight. Instead, CAL effectively relied on assurances that all would be well. We can only conclude that a formal and complete route analysis was not performed.”

At the briefing, Cayman Airways board chairman Clarke, answering a press query on what market research or analyses had been done prior to the decision to launch the route and expand the LAX schedule, said the airline had “not been privy to the details” of the analysis done by the government-run Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc. However, he said, the Barbados authorities had “exuded great confidence” that the route would be beneficial.

He added that Cayman Airways had “done our numbers” regarding the second weekly LAX flight and expected to see larger loads on that route.