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Brent Pin­heiro

On April 20th, Fron­tier Air­lines will op­er­ate its last flight out of T&T. The Den­ver-based ul­tra low-cost car­ri­er will end ser­vice be­tween Trinidad and its Puer­to Ri­co hub, nine months af­ter launch­ing the route. In a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia, Rob Har­ris, Fron­tier Air­lines’ Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ag­er said, “We pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly re­view and up­date our routes based on de­mand, sea­son­al­i­ty, and oth­er fac­tors”. Har­ris did not rule out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the air­line re­turn­ing say­ing Fron­tier “will con­tin­ue to eval­u­ate a po­ten­tial re­turn in the fu­ture”. The Air­port’s Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go in a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia, al­so con­firmed it will “con­tin­ue to work to­geth­er with Fron­tier Air­lines.”

Ac­cord­ing to sev­er­al sources with knowl­edge of the sit­u­a­tion who asked not to be named, the coun­try’s on­go­ing forex chal­lenges played a role in Fron­tier’s de­ci­sion to ex­it the mar­ket. As a US air­line, Fron­tier’s op­er­at­ing cur­ren­cy is US dol­lars and would-be trav­ellers re­port­ed balked at pay­ing for tick­ets in USD over con­cerns that it would af­fect their month­ly cred­it card lim­its. Fron­tier has not re­spond­ed to fol­low up ques­tions sent by Guardian Me­dia.