One month following its soft launching in Anguilla, on December 22, 2010, Cape Air held an inaugural reception at Veya Restaurant at Sandy Ground late Wednesday evening. The event was to introduce its frontline executives and to thank officials of Government, the Tourist Board, the Hotel and Tourism Association and other persons, who partnered with the airline in commencing its twice daily scheduled flights between San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Anguilla.

Couple arriving in Anguilla from Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts on Tuesday

The airline officials included Vice President, Planning, Andrew Bonney; Cindy Beaton, Vice President, Customer Relations; Karen Laingford, Vice President, Finance; Bobby Falcon, Caribbean Region Manager, based in San Juan, overseeing Cape Air’s operations in Anguilla, Tortola, St. Thomas, St. Croix and Puerto Rico; Lisa Kiele, Vice President, Business Development, working closely with other airline partners including Continental; Audley Thompson, the St. Thomas-based Manager; and Trish Lorino, Director of Marketing and Public Relations.

Ms Lorino said Cape Air’s interest in Anguilla started almost a year ago, when the Vice President, Planning, did a feasibility study on the island. “It made a lot of sense for us because our real hub in the Caribbean is San Juan and Anguilla was within what we call a threshold distance that we could go with our aircraft,” she told The Anguillian, the day before the reception. “We saw a need and demand to get people here to these beautiful resorts…and to expand in this market. This is our eighth Caribbean destination that we have added.”

Cape Air's Marketing VP, Trish Lorino

She reported that in the month Cape Air had been flying to Anguilla, the demand for its service was consistently strong with connections from mainland United States. Conversely, patronage from Anguillian travellers to San Juan had also been steady and encouraging. “We always have to look at when the peak period ends for the tourism season and to work with locals addressing their needs by providing service to San Juan for them,” Ms. Lorino continued. “We know that after your tender line period in the tourism industry ends, that our customers will be mainly locals from here. Hopefully we can start to do some more concentrated marketing in San Juan to get people to come to Anguilla as tourists during those shoulder periods.”

The Marketing official disclosed that Cape Air’s fleet of Cessna 402 aircraft, with headquarters in Hyannis, Massachusetts, totalled 64, serving various destinations in addition to two ATR aircraft in Micronesia. She said that if there were to be an additional demand to move more travellers to Anguilla, the airline was in a position to schedule other aircraft to the island to deliver the required airlift.

She said that in addition, her airline had a coach air agreement with Continental which was assisting with the Anguilla-bound Cape Air flights from San Juan. “We also, very soon, will have connectivity with Jet Blue which the folks in the north-east, in Boston and New York, know is very much dominated by Jet Blue. There is a frequency of flights [of this airline] into San Juan right now. We have been partners with them for quite a while and because of baggage handling and ticketing agreements it would be very easy for someone to board a plane at JFK and get to Anguilla with one ticket. Baggage goes right through. So we work with our airline partners like Continental and Jet Blue specifically to make things as easy as possible for the consumer. What we do is to closely monitor the schedules of these flights coming out of the US and match our schedules to theirs so that there is time for connectivity and not racing to the airport to try to make your flight to Anguilla.”

Ms Lorino stressed that Cape Air’s personnel bend over backwards to help their customers. “We at Cape Air pride ourselves in our service. Because we are just a nine-passenger [carrier], and we work in a lot of markets in competition with other airlines, we really do have to set ourselves apart in our service and to generally assist customers. Things happen in the airline industry, especially coming out of the north-east and mid-west. Flights can cancel and change so our staff, especially in San Juan, is very, very accommodating. We also have consierges who help people make connections. If they miss our connection, we will help them get on a partner flight so that they can come to Anguilla and start their vacation. We really bend over backwards for our customers and have [been doing so] for 21 years. May be that kind of set Cape Air apart from other airlines.”

Ms Lorino was told that it was understood that American Eagle would end its service to Anguilla and other islands in April and was asked how she saw Cape Air helping to fill that void. “They have been very accommodating to us as well,” she responded.

“I think when they pull out, we will certainly have to look at the service, demand and volume of business coming in and then we will make the judgment about adding flights.”

She was asked to comment on Wednesday’s inaugural reception. “Typically when we start a new market, we do the traditional ribbon-cutting. But it was a little bit different for us in Anguilla because we started service on December 22,” she explained. “Because that was such a high demand period, doing that traditional type of kick-off wasn’t necessarily the best idea because with the volume of traffic we were carrying, we probably didn’t want to disrupt service with a ribbon-cutting at the airport. What we decided to have was just a reception where it would be myself, four or five other people from Cape Air who will come down and have a chance to meet some of the folks that I met on my visits here…and helped us…educate ourselves on the Anguilla marketplace. So we just wanted to have a reception to thank the folks who helped us to set up our service, but also I wanted them to meet some of the people from Cape Air.”

Asked what catch phrase was being used to depict Cape Air’s service on its nine-seat Cessna 402 planes, which are smaller than other passenger aircraft, Ms Lorino replied: “We wanted to combine that element with the element of service that we are well-known for. So our new tag line is: “It’s the little things that move you.”

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