More the reason to upgrade the airport. Apparently countries see Guyana as a hub for connecting travel.

Copa Airlines to fly Panama-Guyana route from July

PANAMA-based Copa Airlines has announced the commencement of their service to Guyana starting in July this year.

At the Copa Airlines launch, from left are Mr Indranauth Haralsingh, Mr Clinton Urling, Mr Ron Webster, Minister Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, Minister Irfaan Ali, Ms Manuela Munoz Angel, Mr Kit Nascimento and Mr Guillermo Gomez. (Cullen Bess-Nelson photo)

The Guyana route will begin operations with flights twice weekly, on Tuesdays and Fridays, to Panama City, Panama, andpassengers would have the leisure of booking connecting flights to a number of other destinations such as Montreal, Canada, Fort Lauderdale, Florida and New York.

Sales Manager of Copa Airlines, Mr Guillermo Gomez, in making the announcement at a press conference, said that “as a member of Copa Airlines and speaking on behalf of the entire company, we are very glad that Guyana will become one of our most important achievements in 2014, the 30th country on our network and our 68th destination.”

Several steps had to be taken to encourage Copa Airlines to begin operations in Guyana and settling the visa arrangements posed one of the major issues, Minster of Foreign Affairs, Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett pointed out.

ENORMOUS POTENTIAL The Government of Guyana, therefore, has decided to waive visas for citizens of Panama, Peru and Costa Rica. Citizens of these countries can now visit Guyana without the need for a visa and spend 90 days in the country when approved by immigration.

Minister Rodrigues-Birkett also said at the press conference that “the government recognises the enormous potential for trade and investment for tourism with Panama.”

The announcement of a new airline comes at a time when Guyana is looking to attract more tourists as well as other airlines, “when we seek to expand our horizons into new opportunities that await us with the commencement of Copa’s operations,” said acting Minister of Tourism Irfaan Ali as he welcomed Copa Airlines to Guyana.

SPEAKING SPANISH Ali reaffirmed that “our front line staff from immigration, customs, GTA, and THAG would have to change their approach to business, and the first order of business, which started in the Ministry of Tourism and GTA, is to ensure that the staff can speak and understand Spanish.” This is essential as “we expand into new markets and bridge the language gap which over the years has caused many barriers between Guyana and Latin America, he added. Copa Airlines serve at present 68 destinations in some 30 countries with over 300 scheduled daily flights in North, South and Central America and the Caribbean. It is recognised for its leadership in international connectivity, punctuality, quality of service and for having one of the most modern fleets in the industry. Copa Airlines was founded in 1947 as the national airline of Panama and is a subsidiary of Copa Holdings, S.A. as well as a member of the Star Alliance. The airline is also the main operator and owner of Colombian airline Aero Republica, currently known as Copa Airlines Colombia. Written By Rebecca Ganesh-Ally

How long do you give them before they collapse?

Actually druggie this shows the very reason why a moderate expansion of the terminal building is all that is necessary.  COPA will arrive 2X per week.  So why the need for EIGHT jetways?  I think that 3 would have been acceptable, but then your PPP folks will find that too small, as the ability to get huge bribe amounts diminishes the smaller, and the more efficiently and transparently managed a project is.

GEO will never be like St Maarten which can have up to 10 jets on the ground at the same time on any given Saturday.

I will also accept the lengthening of the runway which by the way the opposition also accept.

You know the Chinese built in a 10% bribe amount for PPP officials and their sycophants like you.

Also where do you see GEO being a hub? COPA will connect GEO to a hub.  The success of places like Panama and Sao Paulo as hubs removes any ability for Guyana to be one.  If Trinidad failed at making POS a hub, except for Guyanese, and a few Surinamers, GEO has no chance.

Also druggie the people who will use this airline will be mainly Guyanese.  The folks in DC will be able to fly home without changing airlines.  The Latin Americans who use this will be mainly business people who already know English.  The notion that people are going to fly from Panama, Peru, and Costa Rica with their highly developed eco/adventure industries to visit Guyana is tourists is laughable. Guyana has little to offer, aside from that.

It is a cocaine enterprise. 

As usual, with typical PNC/AFC mentality, you think small. Copa is just the tip of the iceberg, once the airport is expanded many others will follow. Build it and they will come, the afc/pnc's mentality is to wait until the business comes before building it.

The Panamanian based Copa Airlines has announced that it will begin service between Guyana and Panama and other connections from July of this year.

I fully supported this announcement by COPA. An in-transit point through Latin America to the U.S and Canada will be better than stopping in Trinidad for most passenger. Also, bridging Latin America with Guyana through (CJIA) is economically feasible for the country.  More reasons to expand the airport. Two thumbs up!

LOL! 

So airlines are going to fly empty to GEO?  You haven't even suggested who will be on those planes.

Druggie no airline is going to start any route unless they know that it will be profitable.  COPA is only going to fly 2X/week to GEO.

With 8 jetways that would suggest 20 flights per day.  Do you ever see that happening?  I mean you are the one who screams that Guyana is only mud and mosquitos and only Guyanese are going to travel there.

Druggie the Guyanese interested in visiting Guyana already visit.  So who else do you expect?

OK I know that you had too much rum or drugs last night, but whats you rant about GEO (bridging Latin America).  That has already been bridged and COPA is already doing it via their Panama City hub. 

COPA says that the fly to 29 countries, other than Panama with 67 other cities being served. NOW HOW THE HELL CAN GUYANA COMPETE WITH THAT!! 

I know that you have this fantasy that GEO will get 20 planes landing every day to justify 8 jetways but that isn't going to happen.

So where is the evidence that GEO needs expansion?  Given that COPA will not want to overnight crews in GEO for 3/4 nights as it is expensive the flight will most likely arrive in the mid afternoon when GEO is empty.  Not in the busiest period in the early morning. 

This whole thing shows that GEO has limited potential and should only be moderately expanded with 3 jetways and a longer runway.  The latter only to give GEO room for pilot error, given its poor visibility and bad conditions at times.  Also if the PPP wants to PAY British Airways to add GEO.  Because I don't see them flying a 300 seat plane to GEO to bring in only around 60 passengers without this.  Don't see any other airline running jumbos into GEO.

carib:

* You are consumed by pessimism and negativity.

* Bet if a CUFFY were president you'd be full of pride and optimism.

* Listen! A negative person sees difficulty in every opportunity.

* That's you carib----you see difficulty in every opportunity that presents itself in Guyana.

* KEEP HOPING FOR TRAGEDY IN GUYANA AS LONG AS THE PPP RULES.

Rev

Why don't you suggest that the PPP takes the money that they plan to waste on a white elephant (yes after Skeldon factory, Providence Stadium, Mariott Hotel, and others) and build what Guyana needs.

ROADS IN THE INTERIOR AND A PROPER DEEP WATER HARBOR!!  That will boost economic development. Not the spectacle of eight rotting jetways, neglected because no more than 3 or 4 are in use at a time, basically ONLY in the mornings, with 1 or 2 in use after that).

Rev I know that you are angling for your 1% bribe but think about the ordinary Guyanese who you will be stealing this from.

The target market for the airport is not Guyanese visitors. The concept is for GT to be a transit point to the rest of South America due to its strategic location. You cried on the Providence stadium and today it is a glowing success as Guyana can attract world rated acts. Now you cry on the vision of the airport. 

You may have to fly in the cargo section.

Mitwah, you have a problem with the goodie or with COPA airlines?  

Neither. Goadee Walla has a problem getting to Panama to join the flight to Guyana.

Druggie.  The flight will be Panama-GEO-Panama.  The transit point will be Panama as Guyanese connect to other cities in COPA's system.  Guyanese will have a choice of up to 66 cities once they arrive in Panama.  GEO is the end point for every airline that flies there, except Surinam Airways. 

Surinamers will do what ever transfers they need to do in Curacao and Trinidad, both of which offer vastly more connecting opportunities than GEO.  Even if a Surinamer wants to connect with COPA they can do it in POS 12X per week, vs. only 1X per week via GEO.

Must you always have to display your low level of intelligence every day?  For GEO to be intransit there would have to be planes arriving from various points, allowing people to connect.   Panama is a transit point.  Miami is a transit point,  San Juan, PR is a transit point.  Even Trinidad is a transit point, though only for Guyanese, Surinamers, and maybe Vincentians and Grenadians.

Guyana is not a transit point and will NEVER be a transit point.

Providence is just a glorified National Park/Thirst Park, except that POOR Guyanese owe millions to build a PPP white elephant.  How many days of the year does Providence generate US dollars that they need to repay India the loan?

Based on the idiotic statements that he makes COPA will only allow him to fly cargo.  His extremely low IQ suggests that he must be some variety of four footed animal.

Nonsense, you only know about how to collect welfare and all the secrets to bilk the US govt of social services without paying. Airline business is out of the realm of your intelligence, stick to food stamp and section 8 issues. 

A hub in GEO is strategic as it provides a central point for travel to Europe, Asia, North America and the middle east due to its location at the equator and Northern most point on or below the equatorial line.

Providence stadium is a national stadium, not for profit and it already paid dividends as all loans are now paid in full.  

He is a dunce. He was not able to pass common entrance, so his father bribed and got him into Saints where the young ladies used to beat him up.

Apparently you are the one on Section 8 and welfare from the idiocy that you post daily.

1.  How will GEO go about becoming this hub, when it doesn't have an airline and it struggles to get airlift.  Sources have told me that COPA is serving GEO because they think that they can take advantage of the fact that it is UNDERSERVED from the USA.

2.  People traveling from Europe/Asia/Africa to South America can already do so comfortably via Sao Paolo.  Turkish Airlines, Emirates and at least one other Middle Eastern airline fly DAILY to Sao Paulo, offering connections to the ME and the rest of Asia.   South African flies to Joberg with connections to the rest of Africa.  Brazil has some big arlines which feed Sao P from the larger markets in South America.

Panama offers connections to 67 cities in 29 countries.

So come again with your welfare mentality and tell me how is GEO going to compete.

2.  I see you are unable to prove that Providence is earning US dollars that it needs to repay its loan from India.  Its mainly used to host events that Thirst Park and the National Park can hold.  With the West Indies tumbling in cricket, we struggle to get international games played in the region, and than Guyana must battle with Barbados, Trinidad, Jamaica and Antigua to get the matches.

if the loan was repaid then it was the gold miners who did so.  Clearly not the stadium.

3.  Skeldon factory is such a disgrace that you don't even mention that any more.  Sugar production is back to where it was under Burnham.

4. The PPP lost votes because of the Berbice Bridge with its high tolls.  The PPP Indo elite cabal are benefitting as dividends are being paid to them, and the gov't ensures this by preventing people with cars from using the ferry.

5.  2014 has begun and no private investor has appeared.   Tell Jagdeo that he must stop ripping off Guyanese by demanding 2/3 of the profit, even though the project will be funded over 80% by the govt (including guarantees for the loans).  Clearly this investor is secret, and we all know why.

So enjoy your food stamps, etc because your basic ignorance indicates that you must work for McDonalds.

I suspect that his wealthy parents in Guyana banished him to NYC because his stupidity just embarrasses them.

It has been established for years that you are a welfare recipient who can not afford a plane trip to Guyana and therefore has false perception of the progress in the country. At one point there was a campaign to raise funds to send you to Guyana but people lost interest.

Sao Paulo is too far south to be a hub, Panama is too far West to function as a hub effectively. GEO is in an excellent central location to function as a hub, go to google maps and see for yourself if you don't believe me. 

Why are people still legitimizing the inane contributions of goadie-wallah wit ha response?!

Druggie I have no reason to go to a racist country run by a hostile anti black govt.  I prefer to go to the islands where I an vacation in peace, places like St Maarten, St Kitts and Antigua.

Now let us see why Sao Paulo is too south and Panama is too west.

Oh yes, the three little Guyanas, which together have fewer than 2 million people, most impoverished,and the Amazon which has more snakes than people.

Most people in South America live to the western part of the continent, or south of the Amazon, so GEO is in an isolated space.  In any case even if one can make a case for this location, POS is better positioned.  It has an airline with 20 planes, and the ability to buy more.  It has 1.3 million people who represent a larger market than the 2 million in the Guyanas.  It has strong business ties to parts of Latin America, and accounts for about 90 of CARICOM's exports to that region.

Despite this, I am skeptical of POS so why will GEO stand a chance.  Now go and collect your food stamps as I am sure that your McD job doesn't permit you to avoid govt $$.  What is obvious is that you don't know anything about the geography of South America, nor do you know how their economies are structured.

I also suggest that you take out a map of the Americas and note that Panama is literally in the center.  South America to the east and south east.  The Caribbean and the east Coast of North Am to its north, and the rest of North America plus Central and Mexico to its north west.

As to Asia.  Well most travel is to the large commodity nation, all well to the south of GEO, and more easily accessible to Sao P.

Indeed druggie to make my point the largest airline in Brazil has teamed up with the largest airline in Chile, and Sao Paolo is an important hub for them.

With only a high school education it is only fitting that you lack vision. If you look at Copa you will note that it is limited in scope to its expansion to Europe, the Middle East and Asia due to its central hub in Panama. A hub at GEO will offer the possibility of such expansion. And Copa is just one small airline in Panama. Think about all the other nations that can leverage a central hub as a connection to Europe, Asia, the Middle East and even the US. Did you go to google maps and ascertain the prime location that Guyana offers? Think outside the box man, the proposed hub in Guyana is not to service Guyanese but other nationalities travelling to locations around the world. 

Lets not go there with education because on that I beat your hands down.

Why is COPA limited in scope when it is already a hub, and is the 3rd most profitable airline in the world, according to the Canadian govt.

This of course is aside from the fact that it is already looking at long distance routes capitalizing on its EXISTING hub.

Now when you sit down and propose routes you will see how foolish you look.

Name SPECIFIC routes which you think will operate through GEO.

Look at how foolish your PPP is.  We don't have a proper harbor, yet they want some huge airport.  We have no roads into the interior, yet this is where a large % of Guyana's economic prospects lie.

So why not use scarce resources where there are needed, rather than some fantasy dream of being a hub, when GEO struggles to get enough service to meet its own needs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copa_Airlines

BTW do you really think that an airline which will fly to 68 destinations by July this year, and with over 90 planes and over 10 million passengers is small?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LATAM_Airlines_Group

An even bigger South American airline holding company.  Note the numbers of passengers flown.

So where do you fit your fantasy of people all over the world flying through GEO.

Our problem is that we boast that we are South American, yet know nothing about that continent, nor do we understand that they function very well without us. The PPP runs over to Boa Vista and think that this is South America, when it is equivalent to thinking that some small town in Montana is the USA.

They see the 3 Guyanas as being alien, unimportant, and populated by people who  were too lazy to fight for their own independence.  When I was in Brazil the average Brazilian couldn't even find Guyana on the map, and even the more educated knew about it, but saw it as a blank space.  They were way more interested in Trinidad, and Jamaica.

BTW this merger occurred because Sao P is a huge hub.

We know that your education is limited by your mindset and inability to find a proper occupation, hence your qualification for section 8 housing and foodstamps. Even if you graduated from Howard, the board has already acknowledged that this is a glorified high school, hence dummy 2 being dissed continually.

With reference to the topic at hand, I already gave general routes. You have to understand that it only takes a handful of airlines using the GEO hub to make it worthwhile. It is not meant to be competition to large hubs like Sao Paolo.  The gog have already been approached by several airlines but were limited by the airport size and archaic structure to move forward. 

Didn't graduate from Howard so continue to wallow.  I like stomping you into the ground because you are the kid who the class likes to beat up, and yet who comes back daily for more blows.

You cant answer the question and so your resort to lies.  No airline approached GEO and were prevented by run way length, because the only planes that cannot land at GEO are large aircraft like 747s and 777s.  Indeed when Delta pulled out Ramotar was so desperate that he thought that Air China could fly to GEO.

Druggie Air China will sooner fly to the DR, Jamaica, or Cuba than to GEO.

British Airways hasn't the slightest interest in GEO, and neither has KLM.  The runway in Grand Cayman is the same length as at GEO, so if BA wanted GEO they could fly there.

If your google map theory is correct then the airlines would have approached Suriname which has a long runway and does accept 747 planes.  Indeed Surinam Airways used to fly one of them, before they switched to an A340.  Yet PBM isn't a hub, and will never be a hub either, even though they have an airline, which  Guyana of course lacks.

Planes are very expensive assets and fuel is an expensive cost, so airlines aren't going to fly willy nilly just because it looks right on google map.  In addition to that there is something called route rights.  KLM cannot set up shop at GEO and fly to JFK.  It either has to be a US carrier, a Guyanese carrier (Guyana is category 2 so isn't allowed to use a local carrier), or one from a neighboring country (T&T or Suriname).

In addition a hub works best when there is decent O&D (you are an "expert" on this so you claim so I will not tell you what that is) in addition to intransit traffic.  That's the reason why American Airlines shut down its San Juan PR, hub and shifted it to MIA.  MIA offered more connecting opportunities, and more O&D than did San J.  Indeed MIA is another hub for Latin America, for people who can get US visas, which most business people get easily.

You were not even able to guess as to which routes could work through a GEO hub, so I am left with the usual conclusion that your statements are the usual gas that you exhale from that orifice between your butt cheeks.

I will help you out.  Brazil.  Except that Sao P has so many flights to so many countries that I cannot possibly fathom why any one will want to fly through GEO. 

Tell you what druggie, do a youtube on what Sao Paulo looks like, compare it to G/twn and than beat yourself for continuing to be the clown of GNI.