Opposition leader Allen Chastanet has questioned the hype surrounding this week’s inaugural British Airways flight to Saint Lucia from Guyana while lamenting this country’s airlift capacity.
In a release hailing the flight, the Saint Lucia Air and Sea Ports Authority (SLASPA) said it would augur well for the aviation sector, increasing airlift and trade between the two countries.
But Chastanet had his concerns.
“They would go off to celebrate a flight to Guyana. That’s a joke. We have lost four flights a week to Trinidad and they have been replaced by two flights a week to Guyana and two flights weekly to Tobago. We should be crying, not celebrating,” the former Tourism and Civil Aviation Minister told reporters.
Chastanet spoke on Wednesday on the sidelines of a House of Assembly meeting.
He pointed to a loss of flights in Dallas and Chicago and reduced capacity from the United Kingdom.
“We are going to have a difficult summer,” the United Workers Party (UWP) leader declared.
Chastanet, whose party the electorate voted out of office in the July 26, 2021, general elections, said his former administration left the current government a platform allowing tourism to grow by 150,000 passengers this last year.
However, he told reporters he was not sure Saint Lucia would see that kind of tourism growth, if any, for this upcoming year.
Forgot about the flights – as far as the crying both Red and Yellow should be crying about the current crime situation in St. Lucia. Because if this surge of violence continues – there will be no tourism flights period.
Please please please stop bickering and attacking each other and put egos aside —– you ALL need to unite and be on the same page with a combined concerted effort and effective strategy to deal with this plague of violence in St. Lucia.
Amen
Weren’t you the sole reason for Air Jamaica’s demise!
Weren’t you the one spending untold amounts on “ghost” flights!
Your Civil Aviation tenure or track record render your opinions suggestions worthless.
Stay in your lane Allen, the modern plantations.
Can you tell the nation the number of passports you sold for the period 2016 to 2023? If this cannot be done I want to meet the special prosecutor to file a case against the one responsible.
Lydia, the current Government can disclose all the CIP stats for that period.
If they can’t then something not right.
I may have missed it but I haven’t heard this Gov give an audit of CIP when the previous adminstration was in office.
We’re SELLING our citizenship and these politicians (both sides) are withholding the information for the “citizens” awa that not right.
We should have sale by sale commentary i.e. every CIP should make news, quarterly, financial reports disclosing all to the citizenery.
Wake up people…
I HOPE ST.LUCIANS NEVER GIVE U A SECOND CHANCE ……
What chass about airlift. He managed air Jamaica and it was a disaster
But labour give virgin all that money and they only fly October to march, what a shame on lucia
Of course they are less flights coming from overseas. Less people want to come to this crime riddled island. Crime started under the UWP and now it’s quickly progressing under Pierre. All of these old tired politicians need to retire they don’t have the energy to bring anything new to the table.
Please leave politics out of crime,and put the Bible back into the schools.