Aviation industry officials explore ways to make Caribbean travel cheaper, easier

How could air travel within the Caribbean become easier, cheaper and more accessible? If it did, how would that affect the region’s economy? Those were just some of many questions tackled Tuesday during Caribbean Aviation Day, a one-day conference aimed at building up the region’s aviation industry.
The aviation sector supports 140,000 jobs in the region and contributes about $3 billion – 7.2 percent – of the Caribbean’s Gross Domestic Product, according to International Air Transport Association Regional Vice President of the Americas Peter Cerda.  In his opening remarks, Cerda said that while the aviation industry is still profitable, the net profit margins are dwindling. In Latin America and the Caribbean, airlines are making a profit of about $4.21 per passenger – about a 3 percent net profit margin.
“We are in a tough and very competitive business,” he said.
In a panel discussion about aviation as the economic growth engine for the Caribbean, airline executives and industry representatives talked about the barriers to better air travel within the region.
“It seems we are obsessed with forms in the region,” Latin American and Caribbean Air Transport Association Executive director Eduardo Iglesias said.
He said the amount of paperwork – especially the visa waivers often required – that a traveler must complete just to go to a neighboring island hampers travel within the Caribbean, and ultimately prevents economic growth.
The Caribbean governments should work to relax some of the restrictions to make travel within the region similar to domestic travel, Iglesias said.
Michael DiLollo, the new chief executive officer of Caribbean Airlines, said he is new to the Caribbean region and wondered why it always seems that Caribbean travel is under attack.
“When I tried to get to St. Thomas I quickly found out why,” he said.
Flying from Port of Spain, Trinidad, to St. Thomas quickly became a complicated and expensive endeavor, he said.
He also noted that the flight attendant when he landed in St. Thomas said that travelers would have to show up at the airport on the day of departure three hours early, which runs against the marketing of the Caribbean as a place of leisure.
He said it is time for the Caribbean aviation industry to work together and to work with Caribbean governments to make travel to the region – and within the region – easier.
“It’s clear that if we keep doing what we’re doing we’re likely to keep getting what we’ve got,” DiLollo said.
Richard Doumeng, St. Thomas hotelier and current president of the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association, echoed DiLollo’s frustrations about intra-Caribbean travel.
“We’re so, so close to each other,” he said.
He said the distance from Port of Spain to Puerto Rico is about the same distance at Miami to Atlanta, yet it could easily take you two days to get from one island to the other.
LIAT Chief Executive Officer David Evans said if the Caribbean governments could develop a universal security screening procedure it would make the passenger experience better and be more efficient for the airlines, putting an end to forcing people off a plane to go through security just to get back on the same plane.
“That is nuts,” he said.
Traveling island to island by airplane is incredibly expensive, but the panelists said most of the ticket price is actually taxes and fees that go directly to the destination’s government.
Evans said at least in the Caribbean, much of those fees are being reinvested into the airports’ infrastructure, but the price is still prohibitive.
Iglesias said the Caribbean governments need to be much more transparent about how they use the fees and taxes they collect. If taxes on flights were lowered, ticket prices could come down and allow more people to travel within the Caribbean, spreading money throughout the region and boosting the region’s economy, he said.
Whatever revenue comes to an island’s government from taxes could be multiplied by the additional traffic to the island that would come with affordable travel costs, Doumeng said.
Cerda said Caribbean government’s must stop looking to the airlines as a “cash cow” to fix roads, fund government operations and pay for non-aviation initiatives and infrastructure. The high taxes put the Caribbean at a disadvantage, and prevents the region from competing with South America and other parts of the world where the passenger taxes are not as high, Cerda said.
The goal of the conference was to open up dialogue on these issues between the industry and the region’s government officials, Cerda said.
“We may not agree on the views, but it is critical that we’re discussing the issues,” he said.
He said air travel has become a mode of transportation, and must be made affordable.
“Air travel is not for the rich, it’s not a luxury, it’s a mode of transportation,” Cerda said.
The conference, put on by a group of aviation and tourism industry groups and organizations, was held at Marriott’s Frenchman’s Reef and featured four panels throughout the day. The panels focused on the economic impact of aviation in the Caribbean, using data and technology to better the flying experience, the future of aviation security, and regional air traffic management.
The last Caribbean Aviation Day conference was held in 2007 on Barbados.