PPM pushes for cost details of CAL’s Barbados route
(CNS): Following the cancellation of Cayman Airways’ Grand Cayman to Barbados flights, the PPM is calling on the UPM government to provide a detailed report on any financial losses the airline incurred as a result of this short-lived route. In an audio statement, Opposition Leader Roy McTaggart called for “transparency regarding the costs associated with starting, operating and terminating the route, including any expenses related to cancelling contracts with handling agents in Barbados”.
Speaking on Radio Cayman this week, McTaggart said he was aware that Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc., which had asked for the route, had guaranteed to cover Cayman Airways’ costs. However, he said he believed the motivation on Cayman’s side to attract European travellers here via Barbados was “pie in the sky”.
Given that planes were taking off with less than 24% occupancy, and on some occasions virtually empty, McTaggart said the opposition would be asking parliamentary questions in June about whether or not Cayman Airways has been properly paid. He also raised concerns about whether the diversion of the aircraft to the Eastern Caribbean, especially as it was an overnight route, impacted more profitable gateways or those that could have attracted visitors.
Following the launch of the route, the opposition had said that Cayman Airways and the government should be considering more profitable routes for the national airline and consider the Cayman Islands over Barbados.
He said he supported the Los Angeles route and urged CAL to maintain the second weekly flight to LAX, which had been introduced to pair with the Barbados fight. He said that route should be given a chance to grow. However, he welcomed the cancellation of the fight to Barbados, which was never going to be profitable.
“While improving the air links to our sister Caribbean Islands may be helpful, this cannot take priority over Cayman Airways’ role in servicing the air travel needs of Caymanians, residents and visitors to the Cayman Islands,” McTaggart said in a statement.
He said the opposition remained committed to holding the government accountable and advocating for responsible decision-making that always prioritises the interests of the Cayman Islands and its people.
Barbados Tourism Marketing put an end to the deal they made with Cayman Airways because of the route’s poor performance and because other airlines have increased the number of flights to Barbados over the last few months, bringing in more visitors.
The destination was added to CAL’s itinerary last October and will end completely in July. The airline has not yet said what new route is likely to replace the Barbados flight.
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Category: Government Finance, Local News, Politics, Travel
We all know that this route made zero sense to everyone. Now that this route is cancelled, just add more Miami options. A late evening Sunday flight to Miami with a night return flight back to Cayman would be great. People visiting CI for the weekend will be able to enjoy Sunday on the islands and CI residents will be able to get more shopping and other shores done in Miami before returning home on the night flight.
This might nit be possible since nnot only is CAL making poor decisions by CIAA. ie lack of Air Traffic Controllers and Brac airport not able to operate after 7pm.
You may think this does not affect you but the Charles K airport in the Brac is an alternative airport for CAL in ememergencies. Over all numerous bad decisions by the Ministry of Tourism and its Departments which shows poor leadership.
I want to know as well!!!!
“Mr Speaker, I’m very happy to announce that Cayman Airways last year made a profit, after subsidy”. ( Hon Truman Bodden).
Even an fool would known Barbadoes flights would be a bum and lose money. But not the fool voters come next year.
oK..
and how much did we spend ie LOSE on the many Port Pier plans and consultants, Tom Jones, Clifton Hunter 10$m cost overruns etc?!!
All a une shamelessly flushing public cash away!!
Love this…..” this was a minister lead instruction so no profitability analysis is required”.
Classic Caymankind style of doing business
Ppm only getting involved and showing interest now because of the new political group that is forming for 2025. We need fresh new leadership
When a Cayman Minister says “Trust me,” better wipe the slate clean for new lies. However, they are duly elected by the informed, educated electorate (severe sarcasm – for those who the previous thought applies). Elect clowns, you get a circus, and the freak show.
What kills me is the willingness of Civil Servants to take the blame and throw their integrity out the window for these obviously minister led decisions. Is it a requirement to become a senior Civil Servant that you must be willing to sacrifice your reputation for some buffoon who will be gone in 4 years?
Sadly the buffoon in question has the safest seat in the house and will probably be with us for another 40 years not 4.
Integrity…?
Fat salary, lifetime benefits and undemanding work place is what keeps civil servants obedient .
But your buffoons keep get re-elected.
Franz’s code of conduct has a grip over all civil servant behaviour. They are all under his yoke, and have to tow his line, regardless of the regime that thinks they are in charge. Tow it well, win a prize!
just sell cal….cig has proved its failure in running an airline for decades.
conditions of sale:
cal colours of craft remain
minimum number of flights to existing profitable routes.
in event of storm, all craft must be returned to island to enable airlift.
Been flying to Cayman for 41 years. If Cayman Airways disappeared tomorrow most from North America (the most travelers) would never notice. I have not been on CA in several decades; other carriers would quickly fill any void.
Roy should also request & reveal the costs for the ORIA re-vamp that resulted in it now needing to be upgraded… again. Terminal too small, one toilet in departures and no parking now in short or long term, on holiday weekends.
How long have you been on island? Roy was in Government when the refurbishment of the airport occurred I believe. Also there are at least 2 restrooms in departures, maybe even 3.
Agreed however that the terminal was poorly redesigned and needed to be built for future growth not the then current traffic volumes. Everything is way undersized, and the F&B offering, well, don’t get me started on that and parking. But its ok as staff have prime parking so don’t worry about passengers and the general public….
Should have gone with the Canadian airport proposal 10 years ago. Bermuda is now set for the next 25 years with their new Canadian built airport and we are kibittzing around with our piecemeal approach.
We also have no idea what our final cost is because it is a state secret. Why?
Ask Bermuda how much they had to pay in subsidies during Covid to the Canadian company that built it, as they had guaranteed income in return for building it. Check Bermuda’s finances. They are in deep debt. We do not want to copy them.
One toilet in departures…???
Have you ever been there or are you just an idiot..?
The biggest questionable choice with the rebuild is the non-segregated international and domestic arrival flows.
This does not work now, and can only gets worse as things are scaled up.
I departed yesterday. THREE bathrooms with multiple toilets in Departures, parking was fine and the terminal easily accommodated the folks there. Quite complaining and lying.
Try going when it’s a Cayman holiday. Parking chaotic. Long term full shirt term full & told to wait until someone leaves the lot.
Yet staff have prime parking!! Make them park off site during school holidays & long weekends (bus them to work).
The toilet I visited in departures is in a “cubicle” 25 ft long by 10ft wide, it could easily hold 3 toilets in separate cubicles, but only takes one user.This really sums up what an expensive mess we made of the renovations.There are still two large areas set aside for commercial tenants which have never been utilised.
“Opposition Leader Roy McTaggart called for “transparency regarding the costs associated with starting, operating and terminating the route, including any expenses related to cancelling contracts with handling agents in Barbados”
Isn’t that called an FOI request Roy?
Not that difficult to submit……
Exempt from FOI as it is commercially sensitive. In other words we can’t let people know how much money we are losing.
Pretty positive the information can be obtained given its the Ministry of Tourism who put this all together…..FOI’s are for situations exactly like this.
Just depends on whether they have actually been keeping track of the millions they burned and where its gone which our Govt’s don’t seem to do….for situations just like this….
Where was the call and need for transparency when Roy and Joey as Cabinet Ministers that facilitated the selling out of these islands and granting millions of concessions to all their wealthy developer friends that financed the PPM?
Such a stupid and lazy argument. Yes the PPM did stupid stuff. Does that mean no one should be questioned going forward and that successive governments should keep repeating history?
Nobody is implying that anywhere at all in these comments. They are simply pointing out the blatant hypocrisy.
PPM,UPM,CDP & UDP and other defunct past parties are all the same. Made up of the same recycled candidates, some generally good honest ones but those don’t tend to last long. Well here we are now folks with literally the dregs left. We’ve hit rock bottom but nothing surprises me anymore, this bunch might just be the scum floating on top of the dregs.
Correct 11:55; same shizzle; different dizzle.
Just goes to show the power vested in a plate of turkle stew.
But the PACT represented that new blood all you were scrambling for, so what now? Who shall we blame? You elected incompetent new blood and have nothing to show for it. Let’s do it again! What could go wrong
The direct losses from the route don’t matter – the real losses were borne by residents forced to overnight in Miami when we could have had early morning and evening flights instead of this ridiculous nonsense.
Has Cayman Airways explained WHY they are not introducing one more Miami flight each way per day? It seems very odd.
So sad for your shopping trip to be more costly. A Caymanian elite problem that is horrible to relate to. I feel your pain. Maybe elect more attentive Ministers.
You think the elite (of any origin) go to the cesspool that is Miami?
Discussing CAL routes is irrelevant. There is not one reason for a government owning and running an airline. None, other than for egos and back handers. The only other sovereign countries to 100% own an airline are Russia, Cuba, UAE and North Korea. Nice company CIG and we have a population of under 100,000! You really couldn’t make it up
Agree 100% and I could stomach the losses if they actually served the local population (ie taxpayers) with more MIA flights and a schedule that works for the people.
Why stomach losses? That makes no economic sense. Better flights to MIA should still pay for itself.
Many airlines are government backed in some way, having been bankrupted by operational reality and bailed. eg. Air Canada, a former crown corporation, now publicly-listed, remains a regular longstanding federal bailout recipient of Canadian government help. Canada took another 6.4% stake during COVID.
Exactly, same as Qatar, Emirates and Singapore all government subsidized.
9:50, The reason for that is because Air Canada is forced as part of their mandate, to service far north routes in Canada that are not profitable and will never be profitable.
If they were allowed to abandon these routes they would be profitable, however, a large part of the Canadian north, Yukon, North West Territories and Nunavut would be without any air service.
Really not comparable to the airline service situation in the Cayman Islands.
IMO and IME, most people that feel this way have never been here during a major hurricane and especially during the aftermath. This is a vital service to/from our islands at those times. Thankfully there is enough time between storms that the majority of people on our islands are given time to forget that life and our island can get turned on its head in the blink of an eye. In fact many people complaining had never heard of these islands during the last major storm. However, those of us from here with nowhere else to retreat to know what the deal is, as we have lived through it. We appreciate our national airline at all times, but especially during those times.
I would never in a million years vote for anyone who ran on a platform of privatising/selling off our airline.
Cayman scareways always making losses every years for years and still they pump our money onto a dead horse
I mean who fly’s on a boing plane anyway.
There’s a springy question. Here’s a springy answer; those that like to go boing of course. I heard these spring powered planes make good island hoppers, get it?
You might want to run your comment through spell check next time.
Well, many! Stupid comment.
There is a 90% chance you can’t get off this island without flying on a Boeing aircraft..You comment is nothing more than stupidity.. Literally hundreds of thousands of Boeing aircraft flying all over the world right now without incident and still safer than you getting in your car to drive a short distnce..
I look forward to a massive load of answers stating “I don’t have those details” once our parliament meets for one of their twice century meetings in the parliament building (may as well use the White House Regus tbh), to earn there 100k a year and lifetime perks.
What does it matter? Have we been able to review the cost overruns and budgets of the PPM era? how much they spent on Cruise Port Adverts? Let it go. Did everything the PPM tried work? The PPM navigated us through Covid in a stellar manner. You cannot take that away from them.
The UPM tried something that failed. Move on. Humans make mistakes. I suspect we are going to see many of those mistakes in the near future.
You might think it does’nt matter but where our revenue is concerned it surely does matter. The cost is not only the lack of paying passengers. What about the operators in Barbados, office space, and more importantly the wear and tear on the planes. I could be wrong but I believe that the Minister got so giddy over his appointment on the Caribbean Tourism Board that he decided to use CAL as his private mode of transportation to and fro to attend these meetings. He and everyone who supported this hare brain idea should have to refund every penny spent on this charade.
And then resign. You forgot to add that at the end. Will never happen of course.
Ask PPM how many tens of millions they gave away in the form of concessions.
Granting concessions was not invented by the PPM, that has always been par for the course. Do you think that this government changed that?
“Granting concessions” began with the Mac / Michael Ryan and The Ritz.
Invented? No. Perfected? Yes.
@7:02pm..Concessions may not have been invented by PPM but they sure perfected it.
Does anyone remember when Roy was asked to quantify/justify the concessions his government (PPM) had approved and he said he had no way of answering that..
Try to keep up people…Never vote PPM again!
PPM bots out in full effect. Just look at those downvotes! Other than paid shills, who wouldn’t want to know how much money we were denied due to favours to the PPM’s ultra-wealthy friends and donors?
You should also ask how much income was generated by those ‘giveaways” which created massive employment opportunities as well as funds injected to government coffers.
So if politicians earn $25 million because they gave away $50 million in concessions, you are good with that?
I can make up unsubstantiated numbers too , but I’m not so desperate.
Let’s compare the numbers then. Oh, oops – they aren’t available from either side. If I was a developer that was oh-so-generous enough to provide such grand opportunities to the local people, I would certainly keep track of it down to the penny so that when I come back and ask for more next time I can justify it. I wonder why that isn’t done. 🙄
It should be as simple as a flag in their HR platform identifying an employee as a Caymanian, but for whatever reason that data doesn’t exist. I wonder why.
we can always ask at the next cig press briefing….oh wait..
Not to mention wearing out the aircraft. what a bunch of morons.
Just ask the CEO or the CFO of Cayman Airways for a copy of the feasibility study and budget.
Lol. You know perfectly well that this was a minister lead instruction so no profitability analysis required – bit of a “when did you stop beating your wife “ question Chris eh 😉I would be perfectly happy in seeing just a post facto analysis of costs versus recoveries in fares and payments (hah hah) from Barbados under the guarantee. Square root of FA of seeing either, of course.
Whilst you have a fair comment or should it be fare comment, the directors have responsibility to its creditors and shareholders, which is CIG. The directors must be independent and not taking instructions from anyone.
Kenny is following in the footsteps of our national hero, Jim Bodden when he decided to fly to the Turks and Caicos Islands. I do not know how much we lost but the route did not last long.
At least with Turks and Caicos we were putting bums in seats and getting paid for it unlike Barbados.
Turks and Caicos fell apart because The greedy corrupt government in T & C took away the guarantee from Cayman Airways and gave it to Pan Am.
Your problem Chris is that you always hit the nail on the head . You need think like a politician and forget ethics and wrong doings ,Meanwhile keep your blogs flowing. We love them.
I honestly believe that if everything was transparent the CEO and CFO were following instructions from Kenneth Bryan. He had to show off his power and position for his newly found position.
That’s rich. The public haven’t been allowed to review the details of the 737 MAX 8 aircraft leases the PPM committed us to, even as they sat grounded, unworthy of use, parked on tarmacs for years. Shall we revisit the historical catalogue of PPM-authored boondoggles, subverted bidding/procurement processes, and disregarded value cases using the people’s money over the last decade?!?
No. Please. No.
How do you think all the Progressive supporters can afford their big homes and fancy new trucks?
10.02 what an amazingly stupid comment.
It’s true that PPM supporters tend to be successful, but that is because they can read and write and work for their living.