Monday, November 30 2009

THE EDITOR: It has just been reported in the British press that British Midland Airways Ltd Airline (BMI) has sold six pairs of its landing slots at London Heathrow airport to Swiss International Air Lines for £60 million. It is understood that the precious slots now fetch around £10 million a pair even in a recession where airlines are being hit hard in the pocket.

Just about three short years ago, BWIA was reported to have disposed of their seven pairs of Heathrow slots for a paltry £5 million in total, ie £724,285 per pair, as if they were having some kind of fire sale. British Airways (BA) must have laughed all the way to the bank, as if Christmas had come early. While we don’t want to keep harking back to the past, it is still hard to lay the Bwee ghost to rest. It will forever return to haunt us. After all, past Bwee boards used to boast that the London route was their most profitable route, at least before the ill-considered expansion to other British and European destinations. And without any apparent or transparent rationale, we ended up throwing out the baby with the bath water.

Now here we are, staging a half-billion dollar Commonwealth conference and talking about how much trade, investment and tourism would result from such an investment in these recessionary times, while at the same time we hold our breath in anticipation of all the inflows and benefits we were told to expect from the billion-dollar Summit of the Americas. Yet we had an airline with a daily route to London, a Commonwealth hub, and we chose to scrap the route and to practically donate the landing rights to BA. When you boarded a Bwee flight, there was hardly an empty seat to be seen. Something doesn’t seem to add up here.

This action by the Board proved rather short sighted and has led to Tobago begging foreign airlines for some airlift to help keep the tourism dependent economy going. If BA can still afford to continue to fly to both Trinidad and Tobago, and Virgin and Monarch to Tobago, why couldn’t BWIA? Was the exorbitant cost to scrap Bwee, a well known and well respected name in aviation, and to set up Caribbean Airlines really worth it? I have previously suggested that Caribbean Airlines (CAL) should explore the possibility of opening a route to Birmingham International Airport (BIA) in the UK West Midlands while landing slots are still affordable. They should still do a feasibility study of this route and then decide. The West Midlands is the manufacturing centre of the UK and BIA is probably a better passenger hub for travel between the UK and TT than London Gatwick.

It is time to cease this decision making by vaps.



Rawlston G Gonourie

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