Dominican Republic: RED Air officially launched as a scheduled airline

Last week, RED air was officially launched as the fourth airline of the Dominican Republic, in a ceremony attended by the President of the Dominican Republic, Luis Abinader.

The airline counts with Venezuelan capital from the Alvarez family, owners of LASER Airlines, and several Dominican associates. CEO Héctor Gómez explained that it is planning to operate seven destinations in five countries by 2022 in its first stage of a three-phase strategy to be developed over the next two years.

They emphasized that RED Air is a Dominican-Venezuelan capital company that generates a hundred direct jobs, 95% of which are Dominican, in addition to creating between 150 and 200 indirect jobs for contractor companies.

They will initially have four McDonnell Douglas MD-81 and MD-82 with a configuration of 12 seats in business class and 137 in economy class. Its current operation is comprised of flights between Santo Domingo/Las Americas (SDQ) and Miami (MIA) with two daily non-scheduled services, providing 2,000 seats per week. The company expects to upgrade the link to scheduled service by February 2022.

It also has authorization from the Civil Aviation Board (JAC) for operations to Tampa (TPA), Florida; San José (SJO), Costa Rica; Medellín (MDE) and Cartagena (CTG) in Colombia; Panama (PTY) and Caracas (CCS) in Venezuela.

At the launch event, Abinader stressed that the new airline will promote trade and tourism and will also stimulate competition, contributing to «more reasonable prices».

Abinader also noted that the tourism sector, which is the most important of the Dominican economy, is at «its best moment», going «in the right direction of the country’s robust economic recovery».

The boom of domestic airlines in the Dominican Republic

The Dominican market was largely dominated by foreign airlines, which supported the country’s tourism and economic sector. Now with the strong increase in demand, several national players have entered the field. According to the latest November data from the Civil Aviation Board, the Dominican Republic surpassed 5% of pre-pandemic passenger traffic.

Air Century and Sky High Dominicana have been accompanying the recovery from their bases at La Isabela Airport (JBQ) and Las Americas (SDQ) respectively, focused on destinations within the Caribbean.

Considering that this is the country with the highest recovery rate in the region during the current health crisis, both companies have invested to recover most of their destinations depending on each country’s restrictions.

Air Century has flights to Havana (HAV) in Cuba; Oranjestad (AUA) in Aruba; Philipsburg (SXM) in St. Martin; Willemstad (CUR) in Curaçao and Port-au-Prince (PAP) in Haiti; operating with CRJ-200, Saab 340 and BAE Jetstream 31/32 aircraft. On the other hand, Sky High Aviation Services, in its Embraer ERJ 145, has an extensive offer of destinations throughout the Eastern, French, and Dutch Caribbean.

Another start-up that picked up momentum is Sky Cana, a company that has three Airbus A321s, operating as part of the Air Century network to Miami and New York from Santo Domingo, and another connection to the Big Apple from Santiago de los Caballeros.

See also: The first Boeing 737 MAX for a Dominican airline was unveiled.

Soon Aranjet, formerly FlyCana, will enter the competition as the first Dominican low-cost carrier. The airline announced that it will acquire initially five Boeing 737 MAX to launch in 2022.