Chastanet Calls for One Air Space

Never convinced that St. Lucia should invest in LIAT, Tourism Minister Allen Chastanet now thinks that the LIAT and Caribbean Star merger will not bring good news to intra regional travel.
Chastanet, who this week addressed tourism officials and business executives at a Barbados Chamber of Commerce and Industry seminar on the topic ‘Regional Air Travel-A Deterrent to Business, How Can We Fix It’, said that since the merger visits across the Caribbean have declined by as much as 30 per cent.
He recommended that creating a single air space with a central civil aviation authority could rectify the problem, making it easier for business and leisure travel.
“Trying to establish our own civil aviation authorities is to me ludicrous. We are all using different programmes to try to do the same thing, and none of the programmes are talking to each other, so there is no efficiency,” he said.

“Right now we are causing a monopoly to take place because we are making it so prohibitive to do business down here and we are hindering ourselves,” he added.
“We must start looking at this area as one space. If you come into this region and want to do multiple destinations, it will cost you an arm and a leg if you are talking about traveling 15 minutes,” Chastanet said.
“Creating one space, making it easier for people to do business, we must move to one CARICOM card, one immigration card and start harmonizing our systems so that we can do business better with the world, and that’s when we will start seeing efficiencies,” Chastanet added.
Minister Chastanet suggested that regional governments should review their airport taxes to help reduce the cost of travel.
He said there was a dip in travel about 30 to 40 percent between St. Lucia, Barbados, Antigua and Grenada.