Air 2000 is to replace Caledonian Airways’ DC-10 charter service to the island of St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands. The weekly service will start from November 1 through to April 2000.
Caledonian’s principal client on the flight, yacht charter company Sunsail, has declined to continue supporting the service after this summer and has instead decided to charter its own Boeing 767 from Air 2000.
However, Sunsail has agreed to sell seats on its flight to other tour operators who want to package the USVI for winter ’99/2000.
“We are disappointed that Sunsail decided not to support Caledonian’s service as we already had a good relationship with them. We will be losing up to 40 seats a week to the islands by downgrading from a DC-10 to a 767,” said USVI UK director of tourism Don MacIntyre.
“However, we are pleased that there will still be a direct UK service for winter and Sunsail has assured us it will happily sell seats to other tour operators.
“The operator has also agreed to co-operate with us over seats for the fam trips we are planning for next year,” added MacIntyre.
The Caledonian flight, which goes on to Antigua, has had limited success, attracting a lot of interest, but as yet not much actual tour operator business for the USVI.
MacIntyre is hopeful, however, that the flight will be reinstated for summer 2000.
One bonus of the change- over of flights is that the Sunsail charter will have 38 business-class seats, which opens up the possibility of upmarket operators such as Elegant Resorts adding the USVIs to their programme.
“We believe our two lesser-known islands, St John and St Croix, will greatly appeal to clients of discerning operators and hope that the availability of club-class seats will attract new business,” explained MacIntyre.
The USVI Tourism Office is still waiting to hear if its budget is to be increased to help support the direct flight.
MacIntyre is hoping for at least $250,000, up from a miniscule $3,000, to fund agency sales training, sales missions, fam trips and many other promotions.
“We have been severely restricted over the years in what we can do to promote the USVIs in the UK due to a practically non-existent budget.
“We are hoping that by the beginning of next year we will be in a position to put some of our ideas and plans into action,” said MacIntyre.
Most scheduled UK operators featuring the USVIs presently use the British Airways service to San Juan, Puerto Rico, with onward connections. They include Thomas Cook Holidays, British Airways Holidays and Caribtours.