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The Closed Skies

Mar 12, 2010 Editorial

Once again, after far too many times than we care to remember, the question of the limited number of airlines that is servicing our market has risen to the fore. The Cabinet Secretary recently bemoaned the arbitrary action of Caribbean Airlines in raising its fares from Guyana to destinations in the Caribbean, while in conjunction with Delta, maintaining an exorbitant fare structure on the GY-NY route. Few commented that a few months ago, Delta just as arbitrarily slashed the allowed suitcases that can be checked in for free, from two to one. Lack of competition has been fingered as the culprit that is literally keeping us down.
And it is really keeping us down. The bulk of our present visitors are actually expatriate Guyanese returning to check out their native land – especially during the summer and the other festive seasons such as Christmas and Holi. These visitors are always on the lookout for decent fares and on those few occasions when fares have been lowered, arrivals skyrocketed. Many Guyanese from North America have now taken to spending their vacations in other Caribbean destinations because the fares are almost half of what it takes to get to Guyana. This will not do since these visitors inject quite a hefty infusion of hard currency into the local economy.
In addition, the Government has worked very diligently in the last decade, in collaboration with the private sector, to market Guyana as a destination for tourists – especially for the eco-tourism sector. While it may sound adventurous to market our jungles and savannahs as destinations that can only be reached by a slow boat across the Caribbean, the truth is that the average eco-tourist from the United States or Europe wants his adventure in controlled conditions and certainly does not want to worry whether he will waste too much of his precious vacation time just getting to and from the promised exotica. Unless we can secure a diversified and reliable choice of airlines to and from the north, we can kiss our hopes for this sector goodbye.
In frustration, the President has intimated that there has been discussion up to the Cabinet level about the possibility that the Government might have to re-enter the airline business it abandoned over a decade ago. We do not have to go so far back in this extremely volatile business to understand what needs to be done to re-open our skies – and our economy. While two years ago the precipitous rise in the cost of jet fuel was cited as the factor precipitating the departure of two airlines that serviced us (North American and Travel Span), that situation has since stabilised.
The other constraint for operators that did not have the resources of the major airlines, has traditionally been the availability of aircraft, when the solitary jet they would have leased developed the inevitable “mechanical or electronic problems” that caused them to be grounded for any significant length of time.
Especially during the peak seasons, their inability to secure an alternative craft would trigger a cascading deluge of backed up passengers that eventually brought most of them crashing into bankruptcy.
If the government were to resuscitate a “Guyana Airways” they would have to look around for an operator that has access to multiple aircraft. This was the reason for the stability and success of North American Airlines.
The Guyana run alone would not justify several aircraft especially during the off-season. What the government might want to do – maybe in collaboration with a private operator – is use its flag carrier status to service other destinations such as Northern Brazil.
The latter market generates quite a large volume of traffic that has to use quite circuitous routes via the more popular Brazilian destinations.
We feel very strongly about the need for increased competition in flights to the North American destinations. Since it appears that we have been unable to attract another major airline such as American (as had been hinted two years ago) a Governmental initiative may be the way to reach the open skies.

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