Charter operators: friend or foe? Express 04.27.03 In pleading his case for an US$18.5 million state bail out, BWIA's President and CEO Conrad Aleong accused charter operators of dumping excess capacity on BWIA's home turf and cutting deep into the airline's dwindling revenue streams. In his claim for state compensation, he calculated that this would cost BWIA well over US$4.7 million for the six months ending June 31 this year. He estimated that the open charter on BWIA is costing the airline some US$788,000 a month in lost revenues. But it turns out that BWIA has been subsidising some of the same charter operators it has accused of stealing market share. In his case for compensation against charter operators, Aleong identified Constellation Travel among the so-called list of charter offenders who should have their wings clipped. But BWIA, according to industry insiders, has sold seat blocks to the same Constellation Tours at a vastly subsidised rate of $1,695. BWIA is selling the same seats on the same aircraft, its Boeing 737s, at $2,672 to New York. BWIA customers are in effect paying BWIA more than Constellation's charter customers to fly the same BWIA service to New York *************************************************** The owner of Roger's Trinbago Site/TnTisland.com Roj (Roger James) escape email mailto:ejames@xxxxxxxxx Trinbago site: www.tntisland.com Carib Brass Ctn site www.tntisland.com/caribbeanbrassconnection/ Steel Expressions www.mts.net/~ejames/se/ Site of the Week: http://www.pscutt.com TnT Webdirectory: http://search.co.tt *********************************************************