St Lucia-based airline wants to provide services to sub-region
CASTRIES, St Lucia (CMC) – The St Lucia-based carrier, Go Fly Airlines, has announced plans to service the Windward Islands and Monday held a demonstration flight of its Cessna Caravan which it plans to use for travel between St Lucia, Dominica, Grenada, St Vincent and the Grenadines and Martinique.
Go Fly Airlines founder, Mario Reyes, said while he is hoping for regulatory approval, the intention of his company is to acquire five of the 12-seat aircraft at a cost of US$15 million.
Reyes, who described himself as being an aviation professional for the past 30 years, said his company had been offered what appears to be the ideal aircraft for the short hops among the Islands of the sub-region providing direct services, compared to the current “hub and spoke wheel” that exists with the regional carrier, LIAT.
“Our intention is to operate between, initially, Dominica, Martinique, St Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada,” Reyes said, adding “the big question is getting regulatory approval to operate the Cessna Caravan”.
Reyes said the aircraft have been around for the past 20 years, but because of the single engine configuration it has not been readily approved in the first instance.
“We are looking to do our evaluations right now and after that we will be presenting to the regulatory authorities the proposal and see how it goes from there,” he told reporters following the demonstration flight.
“Because it is new generation in terms of a single engine for commercial operation, the engines are turbo-prop engines and the dispatch reliability is virtually one hundred percent. Out of the twenty-five million flight hours that these engines have accumulated, the failure rate is .00001.”
He said the intention is to provide mostly non-stop direct services between the OECS Islands which would eliminate a lot of overnight accommodation requirements and a lot of airport fees.
“You would not believe what it costs – the part of your ticket that goes towards landing at airports and paying a fee,” Reyes said, adding that Go Fly Airlines will be providing a direct service to eliminate that cost factor.
