The negotiating team with ATR for the purchase of the plane was Ian Brunton, who was fired as the airline's CEO last week.
Cabinet approved the deal on September 27 this year. At that time ATR made the announcement and quoted Brunton as saying the acquisition of the ATR 72-600s will allow Caribbean Airlines to continue to develop and improve its.
"The low operating costs and fuel consumption of the aircraft are particularly appealing and provide us with tremendous flexibility in adding frequencies and developing new markets in the regional sector," Brunton was reported as saying in a media release from ATR.
According to the Express, ATR has said it has already received a down payment to build the nine turbo prop aircraft and is going ahead with plans to meet the delivery timetable.
The paper cited David Vargas, an ATR spokesperson at the company's headquarters in Toulouse, southern France, saying Vargas stated that "nothing has changed" since the company and Caribbean Airlines announced the deal in September.
The plan is to deliver all nine planes in 2011. The paper said Vargas was clear that there had been no news of any delay in the deal from anyone in Trinidad and Tobago and there he knows of nothing to indicate that there is a chance that the deal might be reviewed or cancelled.
Questions about the deal arose after a disagreement between the airline's chairman, George Nicholas, and the line minister Jack Warner following Brunton's dismissal.
Warner has written Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar about what he said was a "lack of respect" for him from Nicholas. He suggested that Nicholas had a "penchant" for Bombardier planes.
The ATR planes will replace CAL's ageing fleet of Bombadier's Dash-8.
No comments:
Post a Comment