A report in the British media states that British Midland Airways (BMI) has sold six pairs of its landing slots at London Heathrow airport to Swiss International Air Lines for £60 million (TT$600 million).These slots are reported to have the value of about £10 million (TT$100 million) a pair even as airlines are weathering the current global downturn.
Three years ago the Trinidad and Tobago national airline BWIA reportedly sold its seven pairs of slots at the same airport for a total of £5 million (TT$50 million) in what was considered by industry watchers to be a fire sale.
The value of those slots at today's depressed prices would have been £70 million (TT$700 million).
Industry specialists say Trinidad and Tobago's haste to sell the slots was irresponsible and might have resulted in a loss of about TT$650 million.
BWIA used to operate a lucrative daily service between Port of Spain and London, which the airline had always considered one of its most profitable but the airline gave up the route to British Airways (BA) before its demise.
Critics are saying there was never any justification for the airline to give up that route arguing that if BA can still afford to continue to fly to Trinidad and Tobago, and Virgin and Monarch to Tobago, why couldn’t BWIA?
They have also questioned why it was necessary to scrap the national airline and replace it with Caribbean Airlines (CAL), which is essentially the same airline with a different board and management.
Critics are saying there was never any justification for the airline to give up that route arguing that if BA can still afford to continue to fly to Trinidad and Tobago, and Virgin and Monarch to Tobago, why couldn’t BWIA?
They have also questioned why it was necessary to scrap the national airline and replace it with Caribbean Airlines (CAL), which is essentially the same airline with a different board and management.
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