BA Reasserts Commitment to Caribbean
The Caribbean forms the bedrock of British Airways’ long-haul schedule from Gatwick, with daily flights to Antigua, Saint Lucia and Barbados through the summer and increased frequencies in winter.
There are frequent services to Trinidad and Tobago and to Jamaica, flights to the Dominican Republic, Grenada and Puerto Rico, and a daily service to Bermuda (though the latter lies 1,000 miles from the Caribbean).
That level of commitment reflects the strength of the Caribbean tourism market, but it is a market under pressure from the high oil price and a rate of APD that penalizes the Caribbean like no other region.
The islands are saddled with higher APD than nearby Florida and Orlando and, even more unjustly, longer-distance US destinations such as Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Hawaii.
Colm Lacy, BA’s head of commercial at Gatwick, said: “The fuel cost on flying to the Caribbean is significant. It’s the main cost: almost 50 percent of the total. APD is big as well, given it has gone up 360 percent in the last six years. It is completely disproportionate. A family of four pays £324 to fly to the Caribbean [in economy], when flying to Miami it is £260. The Caribbean is unfairly penalized.”
BA planned growth to the region two years ago, using a conference in Barbados in October 2010 to announce new routes, adding an extra aircraft to the schedule for 2011.
Lacy said: “We’ve taken a little capacity out since then. APD continues to go up. Fuel has gone up. Customers are paying more. Demand has fallen. So we are tweaking capacity, particularly?in the summer. We’ve done our best to maintain as much as we can in winter.”
Most of the changes would be barely perceptible without poring over a timetable, but continuation of the weekly Puerto Rico service, launched last year, appears unlikely beyond this winter.
