interCaribbean Airways, CEO, Trevor Sadler at the CAPA Airline Leader Summit – Latin America & Caribbean 2024

Transcript

Trevor Sadler:We're in the second year now of operating ATRs. We acquired our first ATR 42-500 series, well, 3 years ago now, but it took some time to get that one into service. And we added both another ATR 42 and an ATR 72, to that giving us initial 3 aeroplanes. We made then an agreement to acquire 7 ATR 42-500s from Tarom in Romania. And to date now of that project, taking a little longer than we'd hoped for, but the first 2 of those are flying. The next other 5 are in 3 different maintenance facilities in being prepared for entry into service. So hopefully in the very near future, you'll see some additional aeroplanes joining our fleet that will give us a fleet of 10 ATR 42s and 172s. It is replacing one for one the Embraer 120s, which has been our mainstay for the longest time, but Candidly, we— it was a great aeroplane for us, but the problem was we never had enough seats on an aeroplane. And then we would run into what I would call the commuter design of the Embraer 120. It was difficult to carry all of the baggage that was needed by our customers, and it didn't allow us to get into the carriage of cargo either. So It became a matter of we need a bigger aeroplane. What is that aeroplane? The ATR being current production aircraft, it made logical sense for us to look at the 500 and later perhaps to look at onboarding 600s. All used aircraft, but we take them, we refurbish, change all the interiors out. So from a customer point of view, Looks pretty much like a new plane. We'll interchangeably use them on different routes based on some higher or lower demands. That's been very helpful. The crew are all trained to fly both aeroplanes, and we are looking actively at a couple more 72s to give us increased mix capacity, the ability to upsize a particular route so we For now, the ATRs are based in our 3 points: Barbados, Tortola, and the Turks and Caicos Islands. We feel we can probably double the ATR fleet over the next 5 years without any worries. From the 10 to 20. Right. Yes. We're evolving with our jets. We have parted ways with some of our Embraer 145s. We have 3 left of those flying. We have a wet leased in CRJ-700, and we're looking at bringing another one on board to increase some of that additional jet capacity as we're on the way to introducing a bigger jet aircraft into our fleet. They're all 42s, and you'll see more of what we're up to. The first one that we just put in service recently, the most recent one is called Spirit of Grenada. It's an airplane where we've painted the flag of Grenada on the tail of the airplane. And we have predetermined the next 2 countries for the next 2 aircraft that are coming along. We're going to keep that for a surprise for everybody. But it was our way of looking at how we come closer to the communities we serve, and nothing is greater than national pride. So we brought that first aeroplane, flew it down to Grenada, myself and the CEO on the aeroplane. We had the Prime Minister and members of the government media come out to greet the aeroplane and ceremonially bless the aeroplane, and 3 hours later it entered into commercial service from Grenada. It helps us with more capacity. It gives us a little more range than our Embraer 145s. And then the next step of the next jet we introduce gives us the ability to double our range and from there the ability to actually add several new countries. So there's presently 11 cities that are on our radar for introduction. Some are in the Caribbean and some are a little bit further away, but we intend on creating new connectivity that ultimately the Caribbean has not had. I'd like to think that market forces will dictate rather than governments. Candidly, we compete, we work together with, but increasingly Caribbean Airlines is trying to compete with us in other markets outside of its core of serving the people of Trinidad and Tobago. So it's an interesting case when the government wishes to support its own airline to compete with another airline in between 2 other countries. So that's something the public can have to decide which way they want to support. We are the biggest private airline in the region bar none, and we don't have any financial support from governments. We have to find our way. You know, not every day is a perfect day, and customers are clearly demanding that we deliver. So it's up to us to continue that mission.

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