REDjet’s Chief Executive Officer Ian Burns said the obstruction that the airline is facing in getting its licence to operate in Trinidad and Jamaica is a contravention of the Chicago Convention under Caricom, and ‘no matter what length of time it takes, the airline will get the relevant licence to operate.’
He added that the airline has fulfilled all the relevant requirements and is awaiting word from the civil aviation authorities in the respective countries.
Persons in the Caribbean have long complained that costly and inefficient air service has choked investment and jobs. But regulators in two key countries have not yet given Burns’s REDjet permission to operate. And so far he’s unable to offer any flights to the United States, the most important source of travellers and trade for the Caribbean.
“There is obviously some sort of political interference going on. Our point is: let the consumers decide by giving them a choice.
We’re not going to cost the taxpayers a bit of money if we fail, so why can’t the market decide?” Burns told The Associated Press this week.
His short-haul, low-cost airline recently launched inaugural flights from its Barbados base to Guyana, using two 149-seat MD-82 passenger jets.
Burns said the company has met all the requirements to operate in Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, two of the region’s largest countries, though Roger Williams, managing partner of Miami- based Airline Information, said Burns and REDjet have not helped themselves by aggressively advertising cheap fares to those islands before receiving approval to land there.
“I can empathise with their reasons for doing so. However, it will not aid them in navigating the regulatory bureaucracy in the region,” Williams said. Aviation red tape “can be complex within the Caribbean, and a very slow process.”
Nicole Hutchinson, spokeswoman for Jamaica’s civil aviation authority, said the country’s evaluation of an air service licence is “highly objective and remains free from political or any other interference.” She declined to estimate how long a decision might take.
In Trinidad, Transport Minister Jack Warner has expressed indignation that REDjet was offering fares to his country before getting regulators’ approval.
“I am not against competition, but I don’t think that competition should be based on a degree of lawlessness,” Warner said about REDjet in April.
Warner has since been suspended from his more high-profile post as vice president of soccer’s global governing body, FIFA, pending an inquiry into allegations of vote-buying in the organisation’s leadership election.
Last week, Caribbean Airlines, the Trinidad- based carrier which replaced BWIA in 2007, concluded its acquisition of Air Jamaica, which had racked up about US$ 1.2 billion in debt.
“The Caribbean certainly needs to be stimulated as far as price; it is one of the highest priced airline markets in the world,” Williams said from Miami. “However, the Caribbean also needs reliable air service, something that its own airlines have failed to consistently deliver.”
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