August 17 2018
With Cabinet’s approval, American Airlines Inc. will commence operations between Georgetown and Miami, USA, on November 15th, State Minister Joseph Harmon announced yesterday.
Harmon told a post-Cabinet press briefing that the airline applied to operate four flights per week on the Miami, USA to Georgetown, Guyana route.
According to Harmon, the airline will use an airbus A319 aircraft, which has eight first-class and 120 economy class seats.
Harmon disclosed that the Minister of Public Infrastructure David Patterson informed Cabinet that the scope of the airline’s application was covered under the air transport agreement between the governments of Guyana and the United States of America and the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) had reviewed the airlines business proposal in the area of law, organisation, finance and market analysis and “found its submission to be satisfactory.”
As a result, Harmon informed that Cabinet has given its approval for permission to be granted for the airline to operate schedule flights.
The US carrier formally submitted its application to the GCAA in May.
On March 27th, American Airlines, in a media release, had announced its intentions to introduce four new destinations to South America and Mexico.
Among those listed were flights between Miami and Georgetown, beginning December 20th, 2018, with tickets going on sale from April 2nd.
GCAA Director General Lt. Col (ret’d) Egbert Field would later inform that permission had not yet been sought by the airline to enter the local market.
This was reiterated in a subsequent report where the Director General had said that he expected the US carrier would make contact with the GCAA so they could start the approval process for its operation. The process would include a review and validation of the approval to have an air operator’s certificate from the country of operation.
He had envisioned that the processing of the application would not be a long one given that the airline is an established company with an air operator’s licence and was already in operation.
