In early December a new airline, Caribbean Star Airline, will start plying Guyana's air space five days a week giving direct flights to Guyana and from Barbados.

The airline, which dubs itself as the star of the Caribbean, was launched at a cocktail reception held at Le Meridien Pegasus on Monday evening.

"A whole new altitude" is what the airline, which is based in Antigua, promises Guyana and her sister countries in the Caribbean. While its office has not been formerly established as yet, the airline has secured a building at the corner of Parade and Cowan streets in Kingston and recruited four staff members. These include General Sales Manager, Khakan Ramzam, and General Handling Agent, Maurice Gajadar.

Speaking at the launching, the Marketing Manager of the airline at its headquarters in Antigua, Sandra Scotland, said that the airline would begin its service in Guyana on December 7. She said that the airline was owned solely by an outstanding businessman, Allen Stanford who also owned some 161 other Caribbean and international companies. Stanford, who is the chairman of the airline, has an asset base of some US$17 billion.

The airline celebrated its first anniversary of scheduled operation on October 18 of this year and now boasts a fleet of six Dash-8 aircraft. Another two are to be added to the fleet in the next three months.

Scotland said that the airline currently services ten destinations from Tortola in the north to Trinidad in the south. The other countries include, Anguilla, St Kitts, Antigua, Dominica, St Lucia, Barbados, St Vincent and Grenada.

In addition to the flight arrangement to and from Barbados five days a week, Scotland said, the airline was now awaiting approval to fly to Trinidad and Guyana. She said that the application for this route was in keeping with one of the airline's major objectives, which was to promote travel and tourism throughout the Caribbean, inclusive of Guyana. According to her, this will enable residents and visitors to connect more easily to international flights since if the airline succeeded in obtaining the permission to operate the route there were plans to commence a Port-of-Spain/Timehri return service within the shortest possible time frame.

Additionally, next month the airline will launch a vacation package brochure and a virtual reality website. "The Caribbean Star Vacations will sell Guyana and its hotels as a leisure holiday option within the region," Scotland promised. She noted that Guyana's natural beauty, art and craft, exotic flora and fauna, many rivers and creeks, the famous majestic Kaieteur Falls and its wide and rambling savannah grassland along with many of the other features will be highlighted through the promotional effort.

Another service provided by the airline is a convenient courier and cargo service, StarPac, as well as the facility for online booking via the airline's website. The airline's frequent flyer programme, StarMiles, will be upgraded and improved, providing a new level of membership which will bring more benefits to the travelling public.

"It is the desire of Caribbean Star is to build partnerships with all the stakeholders in the aviation and tourism industries -- particularly, the travel agents who generate a large proportion of our business," Scotland said.

Minister of Tourism, Manzoor Nadir, in his remarks said that the tourism industry was a very tenuous one and as fast as a new star was born there was a falling one. "It is a challenging industry and to keep an airline in the air it requires a lot of hard work, a lot of marketing and dedicated services of the travel agents," the minister said.

Nadir said that it was opportune that the launching of the airline coincided with tourism month. He said he was happy that the airline came to Guyana since the country needed more seats for every destination.

"The government policy is one of open skies. We have been pursuing that policy. If tourism is going to develop in Guyana and if we are going to move in four years to US$100,000 in foreign exchange earnings we need to double the seats coming into Guyana," Nadir said. He told the airline operators that a big market could be developed in Guyana since 500,000 Guyanese lived out of the country.

The minister stressed that the Guyana government was going to intensify its efforts to market Guyana as a tourist destination. He said that it was only a week ago that the government had sale bids to Barbados and Trinidad - which were very successful -- where travel agents and members of the Tourism and Hospitality Association went to the public in the malls and marketed the programme.

A message in the airline's second magazine from its owner, Scotland, stated that the airline employed in excess of 160 well-trained staff, including some of the most experienced pilots and maintenance personnel in the region. The airline, he said, carried more than 130,000 passengers, 70 per cent of whom rated the airline fares and in-flight service as excellent.

He said that its sister company, Caribbean Star Airlines Inc, based in the US, would provide a link for service between San Juan and the eastern Caribbean. "As part of our vision for Caribbean Star Airlines, we will continue to introduce new interline agreements with major carriers in the US, Europe and the Caribbean, to ensure that we provide adequate and seamless connections to all the destinations we serve," Stanford said in his message.

The airline's Area Manager for the Southern Caribbean, Shane Pilgrim, was also present at the launching and he asked those present questions based on Scotland's speech and they were given t-shirts and small tokens.