New legislation presents opportunity for new markets

Improved aviation legislation will allow Barbados to attract additional airlift and tap into new source markets.

Permanent secretary in the Ministry of Tourism and International Transport, Francine Blackman, today revealed that as a result of the new legislation which will allow for the building out of a Civil Aviation Authority, Barbados had signed several air services agreements which would result in increased aircraft coming to the island.

“We have signed a number of air services agreements also looking ahead to make sure that we provide Barbados with the best opportunity that we can get additional airlines coming. It is also based on the fact that the ministry was recently able to have legislation go through Parliament for us to build out the Civil Aviation Authority. That now becomes the bedrock for us to advance our aviation strategy and therefore give life to these air services agreements.

“Before we had the Civil Aviation Department and the legislation around that entity was not sufficiently forward and innovative to be able to address the needs of what is happening internationally as well as to keep the ministry and Government of Barbados in alignment with the ICAO’s (International Civil Aviation Organisation) rules and dynamics,” Blackman said.

“So that piece of legislation now gives us the opportunity for us to not only have our legacy airlines which have been American Airlines, British Airways and Virgin [Atlantic], we are now in a position to operationalize a number of air services agreements that allows us now to have other aircraft from other countries coming to Barbados.”

Blackman disclosed that recent air services agreements had been signed between Barbados and Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

“These are to help us now to go into other emerging markets which is part of our tourism thrust, but it had to be predicated on having these agreements in place first which then will now be utilized to the marketing efforts of the BTMI to be able to go into these source markets to get us more arrivals,” Blackman said. (RB)