BLUE PANORAMA OF ITALY SEEKS TO STEP INTO VOID LEFT BY AIR SEYCHELLES
The Vice President Sales for Italys Blue Panorama airline was in Mahe at the end of last week to discuss the upcoming gap in seats and flights between Italys main cities of Rome and Milan to the Seychelles, following the announcement of Air Seychelles withdrawal from the route and handing their European gateways to code share partner Etihad, and probably other soon to be announced code share partners. Blue Panorama is a member of IATA and has IOSA certification, meeting key requirements to be granted traffic rights.
Blue Panorama, already active on the long haul market, is seeking to become Italys designated carrier to fly to the Seychelles and has made urgent representation to the Seychelles Civil Aviation Board and the Ministry of Transport, to pave the way for obtaining traffic rights just as soon as HM has operated the last flight in early 2012, to continue offering seats and keeping the destination connected.
Mr. De la Porta met with top officials while on a flying visit to Victoria, and discussed his plans with the Chairman of the Seychelles Tourism Board, who is also the Secretary of State in the Office of the President, Mr. Barry Faure, the CEO of STB Mr. Alain St. Ange and his Deputy CEO Elsia Grandcourt, the Chairman of the Seychelles Civil Aviation Authority Capt. David Savy and notably the CEO of Air Seychelles Bram Stellar, with whom undoubtedly special arrangements were discussed, hopefully leading to a code shared operation which can still carry HMs flight numbers.
Only last week was it reported here that Air Astral of La Reunion was considering routing their regular scheduled flights from France to La Reunion via the Seychelles under full 5th freedom traffic rights between the two vanilla islands, a positive development following the devastating news that Air Seychelles was to close down all their European stations and reduce itself, under a major restructuring package, into a pure regional airline. Watch this space for the most up to date news from the aviation scenes of Eastern Africa and from the Indian Ocean islands.
