American Airlines daily flights pouring in for winter season
Minister of Communication and Works, Kye Rymer, has announced that American Airlines has increased its daily scheduled flights to the British Virgin Islands (BVI) from December 2024 to March 2025, in response to growing demand.
According to Rymer, the airline now operates four flights daily and five on weekends. However, this increased frequency began as early as mid-November 2024.
“Last Friday, we actually had six flights,” Rymer shared, underscoring the surge in demand.
Prior to mid-November, the airline offered two daily flights and three on weekends.
This news follows the successful launch of American Airlines’ daily direct service between Miami and the BVI on June 1, 2023. The service, which started with an initial schedule of one daily flight, quickly expanded with five additional flights in June due to overwhelming demand, even before the inaugural flight.
Initially, the airline projected that its direct service would increase passenger movements at the Terrance B. Lettsome International Airport on Beef Island by over 19,000 passengers.
The BVI Airports Authority (BVIAA) had also forecasted a significant boost in overall passenger movements, anticipating an increase of more than 40 percent for 2024 compared to 2022 figures. This growth is attributed to the new American Airlines direct service and the ongoing recovery of the global tourism and travel industry.
The increased flights are expected to provide a significant boost to the territory’s tourism sector, improving accessibility and offering more travel options for visitors and residents alike.
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Good. No need for a new airport then.
Juat a need to extend the runway to properly accommodate direct flights with this type of jet.
This was a good move. Gotta give the gov’t some credit. But, if you have been following, all airlines have increased their capacity into the region. Where we fall short is the arrival process. Shamefully long wait to get thru immigration and customs. BTW, this is the same at all ports. I went to West End last Friday to clear out and I had to wait 45-minutes to pay the treasury $4. yes 45-minutes! And while I’m on my soap box, let’s stop talking about extending the runway. Yes, improve the terminal but quit talking about building a runway for a 747. (Not gonna happen anyway- we can’t finance the build)
We should be either able to prepay or have a machnie similar to ATM that can accept the payment. The territory need to start to think about efficiency. They are so focused on process and retaining jobs vs leveraging the technology to make their jobs easier.
This article is written evidence that there is no need to build a longer runway on Beef Island.
The demand shown for these direct EIS/MIA fights is proof that a runway extension for these smaller jets is justified. But agree that thinking about building an airport for large 747 type planes is not feasible nor needed at this time.
The bigger the kickback! There’ll be a bigger runway who’s going to get the kickback is what the real argument is about.
Great quantity, now can we get the price to be in competition to the USVI. I can still take a flight out of St. Thomas and it will be $300 or $400+ cheaper.
The bvi have great potential as a tourist destination we just need to improve our product create more attractions like a water park at brandywine Bay and have a least two more luxury hotels.
…is we will be unable to finance the boondoggle that is the runway extension. Most of us think money grow on trees. In fact we are at our debt limit and the British Gov’t will not co-sign any loan because we ignore their financial protocols. Did I hear someone say “Let the Chinese finance it” but the British won’t allow that either. Our real conundrum is staying under the oppressive and colonial system we are in, or go independent. I say lets stay oppressed and overseen by our colonial masters, and at the very least their is hope that things will improve.
lol if the airlines don’t see it feasible to fly their larger aircrafts to EIS then extending it to VG wouldn’t matter. Spain built a $1.1 billion airport and it closed three years later because no large airlines signed up.
We already have a new water park at trellis, a $270,000 welcome center everyone’s going to get wet there!