Air Caraïbes

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Air Caraïbes Airbus A330

Air Caraïbes is the regional airline of the French Caribbean which comprises the overseas departments of France: Guadeloupe and Martinique. The airline is based in Pointe-à-Pitre in Guadeloupe. It operates scheduled and charter services and now also operates transatlantic flights to Paris using Airbus A330 aircraft. Its main base is Pointe-à-Pitre International Airport, with a hub at Le Lamentin Airport, Fort-de-France is 92% owned by chairman Jean-Paul Dubreuil’s family.

1 Code Data
2 History
3 Services
4 Fleet
5 Accidents/incidents
6 External links
7 References

[edit] Code Data

IATA Code: TX
ICAO Code: FWI
Callsign: French West ^[1]

Air Caraïbes Logo

[edit] History

Air Caraïbes started out of the necessity to have a regional airline responding to the needs of the French Caribbean territories. The company was founded in July 2000 through the merger of various local airlines (Air Guadeloupe, Air Martinique, Air St Barthélémy, Air St Martin). In 2002, the company flew 445,000 passengers and earned 68 Millions Euros in revenues. It is part of the Carib Sky Alliance, an airline alliance which comprises in addition to Air Caraïbes the following airlines: Leeward Islands Air Transport and Winair (Windward Islands Airways). It started services to Paris in December 2003. The airline is owned by Groupe Dubreuil (90%) and Departement de Guadeloupe (10%) and has 375 employees (at January 2005).

[edit] Services

Air Caraïbes operates the following services (at January 2005):

Domestic scheduled destinations: Cayenne, Fort-de-France, La Desirade, Marie Galante, Paris, Pointe-à-Pitre, Saint-Barthélemy, Saint Martin and Les Saintes.

International scheduled destinations: Belém, Canouan Island, Curaçao, Havana, Port-au-Prince, Santo Domingo, Saint Lucia, St Maarten, and Union Island.

On the 19th of July 2006, the British Government chartered the airline's Airbus A330-300 and sent it to Limassol, Cyprus, to evacuate the British citizens from the Lebanon war that were evacuated to Limassol from Beirut.

[edit] Fleet

The Air Caraïbes fleet includes the following aircraft (at August 2006) ^[2] :

Other aircraft:

5 Cessna 208B Grand Caravan

A further ATR 72-500 has been ordered for November 2005 delivery to replace the current Embraer ERJ-145 MP. ^[3]

The airline has signed a letter of intent to purchase two larger capacity Airbus A330-300 aircraft to replace its two current Airbus A330-200 aircraft, that it has on lease from ILFC with purchased aircraft. The new aircraft will be delivered in November 2007 and June 2008. ^[3]It is preparing to take delivery of its 3rd Airbus A330, this will be the 1st Airbus A330-300, the previous 2 aircraft already in service are Airbus A330-200.

One new EMBRAER 175, one new EMBRAER 190 has been ordered, to replace one ERJ 145. ^[3]

[edit] Accidents/incidents

This section does not adequately cite its references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. (help, get involved!)
This article has been tagged since March 2007.

Twenty people died after an Air Caraïbes DHC-6 Twin Otter crashed on 24 March 2001 into a house on the "Col de la Tourmente" in the upmarket French holiday island of St Barts killing all 19 adult people on board (17 passengers and two pilots) and a elderly man in the house. The man's wife was injured.

Flight TX1601 was scheduled to leave at 1600 from [Princess Juliana International Airport] (SXM), St Maarten, for the 15-minute flight to St-Jean Airport (SBH), Saint-Barthélemy, and crashed about 1,000 feet from the St Jean airport while on approach to the airport's Runway 10 in clear visibility at about 1630. The airport's runway is particularly short - about 2,170 feet - and pilots have to obtain a special DGAC certification to land there. Planes approaching the runway must make a quick descent and fly low over houses before landing.

The airport's control tower gave the plane permission to land shortly before the crash. That was the last communication with the plane, which did not send out any distress signal. The aircraft had no cockpit voice recorder, which may hamper the accident investigation.

Most of the passengers are believed to be French, though there was an American woman, a Dutch woman, two Belgians and one person with dual French and American citizenship. A pilot from Guadeloupe was on board and another crew member, whose nationality was unknown.

The aircraft registration was F-OGES, construction number was 254 and the build date was 1969.