Full flights

Flights are coming in packed for Crop Over, according to tourism and airline officials.
Chairman of the Barbados Tourism Authority (BTA), Adrian Elcock, said while he could not give exact numbers since these were still being tabulated, Barbados was enjoying a “very strong demand for the flights”, with most arriving at capacity from all of the major markets, “mainly the United States, the Caribbean and Britain in that order”.
Elcock said Barbados could do with more airlift in the region in particular, since Crop Over would have benefited from the now defunct RedJet.
“But what we’ve been told at the board level is that the numbers are looking good and our airlift is coming in full,”?he added, noting that summer bookings and arrivals from Britain were encouraging in spite of the country’s much-criticized air passenger duty (APD).
The BTA’s acting president and chief executive officer Urban Cumberbatch said figures for early June had been low but those in recent weeks seemed to be trending higher than last year; while jetBlue general manager Terry Layne noted that the airline’s daily summer flights were currently heavy.
Elcock attributed the traffic to the attraction of the Sweetest Summer Festival.