On Monday 23 August, head of the St Vincent Tourism Authority Glen Beache said Virgin Atlantic inaugural flight to St Vincent would be part of a tag flight.
In a tag flight, an aircraft makes a stop in the first city and continues to the next before making the journey in reverse.
Speaking on the OMG morning show on Boom Fm, Beache said the flight scheduled for 13 October would leave Heathrow London for Grantley Adams Airport Barbados, then onto Argyle Airport.
Beache said the only country in the Caribbean which was a one-stop for Virgin out of the United Kingdom was Barbados.
However, he said, as it stands now, it’s going to be a two-stop.
“All flights out of the UK into the Eastern Caribbean are tagged flights; it may very well include St Lucia soon as there are new arrangements with that country”.
In terms of whether SVG would be subsiding Virgin Atlantic flights to the island, Beache said no.
“No, we would not be subsiding Virgin flights to St Vincent; we are having a marketing arrangement with them, we have joint marketing plans with the airline”.
“There are two things. One, the contract with Virgin is very confidential as to what is in it, for obvious reasons.
Two, we do a joint marketing campaign.
So let’s say we put in 150,000 GBP into a marketing campaign; Virgin has to match that, so the campaign comes to 300,000 GBP.
And we use Virgin as a call to action, getting people to come to SVG, book with them, everything like that. So it’s a joint marketing effort to ensure that the flights work”, Beache said.
Further Reading
Direct Flight: A direct flight refers to a flight between two cities, with a single flight number. A direct flight can involve one or more stops on the route.
Non -Stop Flight: To start with the simplest case, a non-stop flight is exactly what the name implies. It will fly between two airports, without any stops on the route.
