New Tobago flight to replace Virgin

This has been the result at the close of successful negotiations between the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) and a European tour operator for direct charter to Tobago.

The announcement came from Chief Secretary, Orville London, and comes almost a month after the THA was notified by Virgin Atlantic Airlines that it intends to pull their service out of Tobago.

Secretary of Tourism and Transportation, Oswald Williams, had stated that the THA was given a mere four days, from November 26, to put forward a new proposal to Virgin Atlantic.

However, Virgin confirmed its decision by the time the proposal was submitted. Williams said it was a simple case of economics at play in that airline’s decision.

London indicated that the new charter flight will be the first time that Tobago is being served by an airline operating in the Scandinavian market. Negotiations, he said, started just over a year ago.

The flights will commence in December, 2013, and end in March, 2014. The weekly flight will be serving three major Scandinavian cities: Stockholm, Oslo and Copenhagen.

London said the THA will provide marketing support and airlift to the charter airline, and the executive council, he added, has already approved $3 million towards this end, including other flights coming out from Europe.

With respect to Virgin Atlantic Airlines, London noted that the THA had tried to enter into a binding contract with the Airlines for a period of three to four years, but after the THA signed the contract, Virgin did not sign, and he did not know why they refused to do so.

Virgin’s decision to pull its summer flights was because they were losing too much money, and so it was more profitable to put the aircraft on another destination, which London indicated was Cancun, Mexico.

The THA, he said could not have gotten Virgin to change its decision. He admitted that at one time, even the winter flights were in jeopardy, but Virgin was willing to negotiate on that, but not on the summer flights.

The Chief Secretary indicated that two verbal agreements were made on the winter flights into Tobago. The first was that there will now be two weekly flights to Tobago in the winter, and secondly, that the THA pays ?1 million in support of the flights. The 500 persons who were pre-booked on the summer flights to visit Tobago were now being allowed to come to Tobago through Barbados. This meant he added, they are still positioned to earn some revenue.