One wonders why the Guyanese public continues to have to suffer the agony of charter-type operations with inadequate resources and tenuous relations with their air carriers. What is it that the Ministry of Public Works and the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority need to have drummed into their existence before they realise that Guyanese cannot continue to be subjected to substandard and iffy service on the North American route.
Despite all of its previous assurances less than a year ago, TravelSpan has now again disappointed the public by announcing that it is unable to fulfil its booking commitments as it has split with Vision Airlines, its air carrier. This, of course, was not the first time that the TravelSpan charter has encountered turbulent skies. In 2006 it graduated from a chartered service to scheduled flights and had to pull back to being a plain travel agency less than two years later after it experienced heavy losses, suffered a failed investment in the Cricket World Cup and was hit by high fuel prices.
Any carrier which has had such a troubled existence should have the threshold for re-entry to the market set twice as high. That doesn’t seem to have been the case and December 2013 saw the reappearance of TravelSpan as a scheduled service operator without having the necessary air carrier backing to assure the consistency required. Correctly sensing that the public would be sceptical of its reappearance particularly in the peak season, in November last year, its President Nohar Singh said in an interview with Stabroek News “We want to clear up the misconception that we are just here for peak season and will leave after… we are here to stay but we know that is dependent on the people so we are saying to them, ‘We are here for you and for the long haul… airlines will now lower their fares but we are prepared.’”
Now, after harvesting two peak periods, December, 2013/January 2014 and June to August, TravelSpan has pulled the rug out from under its customers and the odds for its full-scale return are not good. Passengers now have to scramble for refunds or be booked on other carriers. It is an all too familiar scene. From the very outset of its operations last December, TravelSpan began to experience difficulties and it was clear that the relationship with its air carrier was tenuous.
The last several months have been testing times for the flying public. Not only has TravelSpan disappointed but there were delays and difficulties with Fly Jamaica flights and a disastrous start to Dynamic which had to be immediately withdrawn from the market.
What is clear from the ongoing problems in the aviation industry, is that the fairly small demand for airlift into Guyana is not attracting the big players. The departure of Delta in 2012 left a significant gap which has not been readily filled. So Caribbean Airlines (CAL) has dominated this market with the risk of likely higher prices as other competitors have struggled.
To count the numbers of operators who have entered this market over the last 10 years without adequate resources and clearly only to profit off the peak periods would expose the disastrous handling of the sector by the government.
The demands of Guyanese remain the same. The government must find a reputable carrier to provide competition to CAL on this route. Second, whenever contemplating permitting charter-type services to offer scheduled services, the operators have to have impeccable track records and unfettered access to other aircraft in the case of breakdown and unforeseen problems.
