The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

THE South American market is “ripe” with opportunity to generate more airlift to the Bahamas, a senior Ministry of Tourism official said yesterday, stressing the need for sustainability of Copa Airline’s Panama-Nassau route and for increased frequencies.

Speaking to Tribune Business at the 11th Latin American and Caribbean Air Transport Association ALTA Airline Leaders Forum at the Atlantis Paradise Island Resort, Tyrone Sawyer, senior director of airlift development at the Ministry of Tourism said: “We see South America as being very ripe with opportunity to build future airlift to our destination. When you have existing relationships that you have with Copa, which is four days a week, that has to be nurtured and promoted.

“We see our job as making that more sustainable. Then you have an airline like American and its main hub in Miami. They have got flights from Brazil, Argentina, Columbia and Mexico. We have seen our business on American Airlines increase since Copa would have started business to Nassau.”

Mr Sawyer stressed that the right promotion and pricing was needed to build on that business. “We need the right type of promotional tactics whether its pricing and the schedule,” he said. “Copa just amended their schedule. They are going to have all of the flights now operate with the same schedule. About two years ago they changed two of the flight times to a later time to accommodate another connecting bank and all of these things tend to impact the performance of the flights. We need to makes sure that over time we have the right tactics to ensure that we are sustainable over the long term.”

He added: “What we would like to see is that become a daily service again. We will be more satisfied when we see daily service and perhaps more flights a day because we see that as a real opportunity for our destination.”