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By the Caribbean Journal staff

In the latest boost for St Kitts’ ongoing airlift boom, Air Canada has announced the addition of a second weekly flight to the Caribbean destination. St.Kitts has over the last few years seen a transformation in it’s tourism sector where record breaking increases have been seen in both stayover and cruise visitors. In 2018 the country reached the 1 million cruise passenger arrivals landmark thus making the destination a Marquis destination. In 2018 there was also a 20% increase in stayover visitors and for the frist time in the history of the RLB International 10 international flights are accomodated every Saturday during the Tourism season which runs from October to May.

Air Canada will be launching a second weekly nonstop flight from Toronto to St Kitts beginning next winter.

The new flights will operate on Tuesdays, complementing existing weekly service on Saturdays.

“I could not be more pleased about the addition of our first ever mid-week flight by Air Canada,” said St Kitts Tourism Minister Lindsay Grant. “These Tuesday flights provide Canadian visitors and the Diaspora alike with more options to visit the destination during the busiest time of year for leisure travel. The service increase is highly significant for us and demonstrates the carrier’s growing confidence in our tourism product.”

The flights will run from February 11 through April 14, 2020.

Air Canada is running the service on Airbus A319 aircraft with 136 seats.

“Following its extension of service to St. Kitts to six months of the year for winter 2018-2019 and the upgrading of the majority of those flights from a 136-seat Airbus A-319 to a 200-seat Airbus A-321 aircraft, Air Canada’s addition of mid-week flying from Toronto for the first time in our history is a huge benefit for us,” said Racquel Brown, CEO of the St Kitts Tourism Authority. “Allowing more flexibility in travelers’ length of stay, it provides one more building block to help us to continue our momentum of strong arrivals growth from Canada that we are achieving through targeted marketing to the affluent traveler in the golf and lifestyle niche markets.”

The Air Canada flights represent the only scheduled flights to St Kitts from the Canadian market.