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Location: That star on your map in the middle of the East Coast, DMV
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POP still sees a good mix of passengers from Canada/Europe, but it's typically one Canadian flight per day and another one to Europe.
I'm in Puerto Plata right now actually, the airport is just too small to handle that many major flights in and out per day. I flew into the from Colombia this time into Las Americas, but leave the country on United from POP to Newark and then my final destination after that. Currently this summer United is dominating that even more so than the Miami direct route. In May when I flew down on American, the inbound flight actually was direct from Charlotte to POP, and then went back through Miami. JetBlue during the winter at least had a direct route from JFK to POP open if I remember correctly.
Last edited by the resident09; 08-05-2022 at 08:00 AM..
Why would an airline mistreat a certain population? It doesn’t make sense. Surely many employees on those routes and manning the desks and hosting on the plane are Dominican themselves. Seems to me they’ll just be shootings themselves in the foot.
Airlines do have images of certain populations and single them out for subpar treatment. AA is equally bad so I do not know what choice Dominicans have. I can expand this beyond Dominicans to Caribbean people on the whole.
Looks like Dominican’s own Arajet is poised to give JetBlue some more competition.
Arajet is a serious attempt in creating a new ultra-low cost airlines in Latin America. It has the backing on many investors including some wealthy Dominican families and the Boston based Bain Capital with I forgot how many billions of dollars just for Arajet. This will be one of the largest investments in the DR's history (without question one of the largest investments in the Caribbean and the largest for any Caribbean airlines). All their airplanes are factory new from Boeing. The first time a Latin American airlines starts with brand new airplanes.
They started to sell their tickets to the first routes (all from Santo Domingo) to El Salvador, Guatemala, Lima (Peru), Mexico and other places that includes Colombia. Later in the year they will also start to fly to the USA. The prices for the routes that will start in September are crazy low. Flights from Santo Domingo to El Salvador and back to Santo Domingo came out for less than US$300 which is unheard of. Prices have gone up because thst was part of an inauguration promotions, but they are still the cheapest in the market. Tickets to places like El Salvador and Guatemala were almost sold out within days of starting their sell, mostly middle class Dominicans that wanted to vacation in these places and the exorbitant prices just to get there prohibited them from doing the trip. With Arajet they took advantage of the low fares.
Another plus is that their crew are going to be all Dominicans (except the pilots which will eventually be all Dominicans, but as of now they only have one). This is good news for Dominicans with stewardship experience in addition to airplane mechanics, etc as it will create more job opportunities for them. Everyone needs to be fluent in Spanish and English.
POP still sees a good mix of passengers from Canada/Europe, but it's typically one Canadian flight per day and another one to Europe.
I'm in Puerto Plata right now actually, the airport is just too small to handle that many major flights in and out per day. I flew into the from Colombia this time into Las Americas, but leave the country on United from POP to Newark and then my final destination after that. Currently this summer United is dominating that even more so than the Miami direct route. In May when I flew down on American, the inbound flight actually was direct from Charlotte to POP, and then went back through Miami. JetBlue during the winter at least had a direct route from JFK to POP open if I remember correctly.
I think Canadians were the first to popularize travel to DR, POP/N. Coast likely back in the 80's...long before Punta Cana became a destination.
They started to sell their tickets to the first routes (all from Santo Domingo) to El Salvador, Guatemala, Lima (Peru), Mexico and other places that includes Colombia. Later in the year they will also start to fly to the USA. The prices for the routes that will start in September are crazy low. Flights from Santo Domingo to El Salvador and back to Santo Domingo came out for less than US$300 which is unheard of. Prices have gone up because thst was part of an inauguration promotions, but they are still the cheapest in the market. Tickets to places like El Salvador and Guatemala were almost sold out within days of starting their sell, mostly middle class Dominicans that wanted to vacation in these places and the exorbitant prices just to get there prohibited them from doing the trip. With Arajet they took advantage of the low fares.
This will be an interesting option for middle class Dominicans, and vice versa. I know ES and Guatemala were the only two countries for a long while in C.A. that didn't require tourist visas for Dominicans. There was also the multi layover headache. I had a friend that had to fly into Panama City, then San Pedro Sula just to get to Guatemala through Avianca once. Also shows the growing purchasing power in the region, where these routes make sense.
There is another plus that makes El Salvador popular with Dominicana and is the current Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele is declared fan of the DR like few presidents from other countries have shown. Not only has he mentioned the DR as an example for him in many speeches, he has also done things such as the DR was the first country he visited once he became president of El Salvador and he said in Tweet that he is a fan of the Santo Domingo's baseball team Tigres de Licey among other things. The guy is pro-DR, so that strokes on the right keys for many Dominicans.
Here is the Ambassador of El Salvador in Santo Domingo mentioning in a Dominican radio show how much Nayib Bukele likes the DR (in Spanish).
One Dominican that lives in NYC actually made a song about Nayib Bukele. Here he sang his song in some reunion among Salvadorans in the USA (notice the blue and white El Salvador flags).
Dominican influencer said she will devote her savings into investing in Surf City, El Salvador. That's how much admiration for that country she has after seeing how much admiration Bukele has for the DR (in Spanish).
Regardless of his politics, Bukele has increased Dominican admiration for El Salvador and I will not be surprised if it becomes a popular place to go on vacation among middle class Dominicans in the way right now everyone and their mother is obssessed in doing tourism in Colombia. I can see El Salvador becoming one of the most popular place in Central America for visiting Dominicans.
Last edited by AntonioR; 08-26-2022 at 10:50 AM..
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