“BA Boost” is B.S.
The Nation article “BA Boost” is totally erroneous and appears to be nothing more than spin to make up for yesterday’s disastrous news that Virgin Atlantic is cutting seat capacity to Barbados by 3,000 seats a month.
‘BRITISH AIRWAYS (BA) is projecting a good winter season for its Barbados business, with more than 2000 passengers arriving here every week.’ (from The Nation article BA Boost)
The airline is in fact operating 10 flights per week using B777 aircraft with 226 seats, a TOTAL of 2,226 seats in every plane is full, a near impossibility. A previous Nation news story about a British Airways flight grounded at Grantley due to a bird strike revealed that the London-bound flight only had 100 passengers on board. That again shows how much of this current BA announcement is spin.
As the airline operated 12 flights per week last winter, today’s announcement is in fact a reduction of capacity, but the public apparently must not be told the truth: nevermind that the truth about the tourism industry is visible throughout Barbados.
Our tourism ‘leaders’ act as if we were still in those magic days when the Concordes of British Airways declared Barbados to be the number one island destination in the world – when the crowds were beating down the doors just to spend a week or two in Bim.
BA boost
BY GERCINE CARTER
BRITISH AIRWAYS (BA) is projecting a good winter season for its Barbados business, with more than 2 000 passengers arriving here every week.
The airline’s winter season operations began last month with ten weekly direct London-to-Barbados return flights and district manager Nigel Blackett said already the passenger loads were “encouraging”.
The BA aircraft has a seating capacity of 226 and there is an expected boost in business with a weekly air/sea exchange of cruise ship and airline passengers, starting November 16.
This will see close to 200 cruise ship passengers taking a BA flight back to London from Barbados, while a similar number of BA passengers will join the cruise ship in Barbados.
… from The Nation BA Boost
Concorde over Barbados stamp image courtesy of George Wu, Taiwan, Republic of China (George has a wonderful website for aviation enthusiasts)
Further Reading
Barbados prepares to bid farewell to Concorde – 11/8/2003
Courtesy of ConcordeSST.com
With the last scheduled supersonic flight to Barbados set for August 30th, the people of this Caribbean island are preparing to bid farewell to the icon that has graced their island for nearly 15 years, and that has helped to build their very successful tourist industry. Continue reading
