Feb. 26, 2003 – The Port Authority board had good news and bad news from airlines serving the territory at its Wednesday meeting.
The good news: USAirways is adding a direct flight once a week from Charlotte, North Carolina, to St. Croix starting March 15.
The bad news: American Airlines is carrying through with the cutbacks in service it warned of last month upon learning of VIPA's 25 percent increase in airport landing and passenger fees that took effect Feb. 1.
In a Feb. 13 letter to Darlan Brin, VIPA executive director, Philip T. Olivieri, American's regional managing director for Puerto Rico, Haiti and the Virgin Islands, wrote: "As a result of the increased fees in the USVI, please be advised that we have reduced nine flight operations from our flight schedule in April [and] 31 flight operations May through November. This will affect the New York and Boston markets."
Steve Houlder, Delta Air Lines regional manager for properties, had written to Brin on Jan. 28 with a less explicit message, saying that "Delta is evaluating a service reduction starting in February due to the proposed increase in rates and charges." However, Robert de Lugo, Delta's St. Thomas station manager, said at Wednesday's VIPA board meeting that he knew of no immediate schedule changes.
De Lugo was among several airline representatives who attended the meeting in the hope of hearing that VIPA had found a means of rolling back the increases. That was not to be, although Brin said he is searching for alternate sources of revenue to deal with the authority's current $2 million deficit. (See "VIPA board stays firm on airport fee hikes:.)
Pamela Richards, VIPA board chair, announced the new USAirways flight with great enthusiasm. Richards, who is Tourism commissioner, said: "We haven't figured out how to celebrate it yet."
USAirways spokeswoman Amy Kudwa said Wednesday evening that the flight will operate Saturdays only, something that had not been made clear at the board meeting. "What we are doing is what we call 'unwrapping' our Charlotte-St. Thomas flight," she said. "The Charlotte-St. Croix flight is in addition to the daily service from Charlotte to St. Thomas.,"
The new flight is scheduled to depart Charlotte at 10:15 a.m. EST and arrive on St. Croix at 2:46 p.m. local time. It will depart St. Croix at 4 p.m. for arrival in Charlotte at 7 p.m. EST.
Both Kudwa and Richards remarked on one encouraging fact: The inaugural flight is sold out.
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