When we were in Bonaire a few weeks ago we heard some rumors that additional airline services were about to be announced. For example, it would seem logical, given how crowded the Air Jamaica flights are, for US Airways, Delta and American to formally extend service. (We know about the AA express flights from San Juan.) It would be WONDERFUL if one the discount carrier announced service. Anyone have any SOLID information?

Thanks.

I sure do hope so, I remember the day of ALM, and was grateful for Air Jamaica but the last couple of years with them have not been good. planes are getting in bad shape and they don't seem to be fixing the problems

I`m agree with Tina....The Air Jamaica planes are getting in bad shape . we need another airline service !Urgent!

I sent an e-mail to Delta to see if they were considering adding flights to Bonaire. Their reply indicated they were looking at new routes but it was was phrased in typical bureaucratic language so it was hard to tell how serious they are. Perhaps more messages to Delta, American, and US Air could get some additional flights.

I would be very surprised if Delta would fly to Bonaire. They flew into Curacao for a couple of years with subsidies from Curacao and they could not make money at it. Bonaire has never shown any wiliness to promote tourism through subsidies thus I would be amazed if any US airline would pick up Bonaire. Hopefully AA will continue to fly to Bonaire.

Tom - not true on the subsidizing part. Bonaire actually did subsidize the initial AJ flights by guaranteeing a certain number of seats. However now they truly have no money, so subsidizing/guaranteeing is not an option.

The stated reason other airlines claim they won't fly to Bonaire is because Bonaire doesn't have enough hotel rooms for a new airline to be able to guarantee enough seats filled to fly profitably. Hence, local government is trying to (at least they say they are) encourage more rental rooms to be built and made available.

Looking at the flip side - if Bonaire were really easy to get to, perhaps we'd be overrun and crowded at lodgings, restaurants, dive sites, etc. Do you really want that? ;-)

Jake

Answer: No! Thanks for the input, Jake. Aruba, we don't want. Have to find a nice balance in between there somewhere so everyone benefits....the folks and Bonaire and the airlines. Not an easy task while maintaining the serenity and peacefulness of Bonaire and livelihood for her people, too. Carole

Thanks Jake!

A very correct remark (the flip-side remark), well said...


Harrie

An interesting piece of information here would be load-factor numbers for AJ and AE.

Surely there are enough room nights available now to give the 2 present airlines good load factors for Bonaire. (I seem to remember that the small a/c AE uses for the long flight make break-even difficult, though.) I can't see more flights/airlnes being attracted to serving Bonaire until all the players (airlines and on-island) can attract enough tourists to overload the present seat availability. Which I understand isn't close. Am I correct in that??

I think you're right, Glen. In addition to AE and AJ, you need to add the available seats to/from Bonaire on KLM (was around 60/flight), and all seats available from Curacao and Aruba as well. If you put all those together, I'm guessing it would mean any new flight in would have to pretty much steal seats from the existing carriers in order to get anything close to a decent load factor, and that's a risky proposition. Hence the talk about needing more rooms to fill so that there is more capacity to fill (and share).

Jake

One more correction if you will. Bonaire itself did not agree to guarantee the seats on the intitial AJ flights. It was the tour operators who agreed to foot the bill. It intially was quite a bit of money and I dounbt if the operators and government ever have gotten squared away. It is sometimes tricky business to enter into agreements that are not well defined.