Ongoing delay in creating a free trade zone, partly due to complicated air traffic rules, leaves liberalisation a faint hope
Progress towards creating a common Caribbean aviation market has been delayed again due to the postponement of single market legislation in most former British colonies, leaving open skies talks with the USA a distant hope.
Members of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) group of English-speaking island nations had set January 2005 for the establishment of a free trade zone, which it was hoped would kick-start air transport liberalisation in the region. Only the Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago parliaments ratified the treaty, delaying implementation, says Senator Rudy Grant, Barbados tourism and international transport parliamentary secretary.
Trinidad & Tobago is close to securing Category I safety oversight approval from the US Federal Aviation Administration, permitting its flag carrier BWIA to start direct flights to Miami and San Juan, Puerto Rico, which could stimulate the eastern Caribbean's air transport market, he adds.
Barbados and other islands are updating their civil aviation rules, many of which date to the British colonial period. "Many of the civil aviation acts have no clear indication of the duties or rights of each country's transport minister, making it impossible for countries to grant a negotiating mandate to a regional body," says Grant. The aim is to harmonise air transport rules as a first step to opening the market, a move long overdue, says Edward Gilkes, general manager of Antiguan carrier Caribbean Star.
The situation is complicatedfurther by the region's French and Dutch islands, where air traffic rights are governed directly by Paris and The Hague respectively, says Gilkes. Any open skies deal between the European Union and the USA, for example, would affect the air traffic rights of the carrier's Puerto Rican subsidiary Caribbean Star on routes to the island of St Martin, where the airport falls within the autonomous Netherlands Antilles jurisdiction, but requires French approval as an official port of entry to France. The European Commission says such intricacies over the Caribbean were among the technicalities that delayed the open skies talks with the USA this year.
JUSTIN WASTNAGE / BRIDGETOWN
Source: Flight International
