Brent Pin­heiro

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

The In­ter­na­tion­al Air Trans­port As­so­ci­a­tion (IA­TA) is call­ing on the An­tigua & Bar­bu­da gov­ern­ment to clar­i­fy a pro­posed plan to raise air pas­sen­ger tax­es for in­ter­na­tion­al trav­ellers. On June 24, the Gas­ton Browne-led ad­min­is­tra­tion ap­proved a US$10 in­crease in the Pas­sen­ger Head Tax for all in­ter­na­tion­al pas­sen­gers ar­riv­ing in and de­part­ing An­tigua & Bar­bu­da, in­creas­ing the tax from US$40 to US$50 per pas­sen­ger (one way). Trav­el with­in the CARI­COM re­gion will be ex­empt from this pro­posed in­crease.

IA­TA is now push­ing back against that de­ci­sion, warn­ing that it could have a neg­a­tive im­pact on the coun­try's pas­sen­ger traf­fic, long-term air con­nec­tiv­i­ty, and com­pet­i­tive­ness in the re­gion. Ac­cord­ing to IA­TA da­ta, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da's pas­sen­ger traf­fic is al­ready down by 2.6% dur­ing the first half of 2026 com­pared with the same pe­ri­od in 2025.

IA­TA, a trade as­so­ci­a­tion rep­re­sent­ing over 370 air­lines, al­so called for trans­paren­cy in how the rev­enue from this high­er tax would be al­lo­cat­ed. Ac­cord­ing to a June 24 Cab­i­net note, the ad­di­tion­al rev­enue would be used to, among oth­er things, meet the coun­try's fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions to the East­ern Caribbean Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty (EC­CAA) and the East­ern Caribbean Supreme Court (EC­SC). An­tigua and Bar­bu­da would be the on­ly coun­try im­ple­ment­ing this $10 in­crease, as pro­pos­als cur­rent­ly on the ta­ble call for a $2.50 con­tri­bu­tion from in­com­ing and out­go­ing pas­sen­gers to be al­lo­cat­ed to EC­CAA.

How­ev­er, IA­TA ar­gues that the coun­try has been shy on the de­tails and stake­hold­ers have not yet been told how the pro­posed in­crease was cal­cu­lat­ed nor how much rev­enue it is ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate. IA­TA's Re­gion­al Vice Pres­i­dent for the Amer­i­c­as Pe­ter Cer­da warned that push­ing a na­tion­al mea­sure be­fore the re­gion­al frame­work has been de­cid­ed up­on car­ries risks that can un­der­mine ef­forts to "achieve a co­or­di­nat­ed re­gion­al ap­proach to avi­a­tion fund­ing." In­stead, he wants the re­gion­al EC­CAA ini­tia­tive to be sep­a­rate from pro­pos­als for na­tion­al pas­sen­ger charge in­creas­es. This, he said, would al­low each mea­sure to be con­sid­ered in­de­pen­dent­ly and as­sessed on its own mer­its.

While a US$10 tax may seem neg­li­gi­ble, avi­a­tion ex­perts say even mi­nor fees can in­crease tick­et costs, forc­ing trav­ellers and air­lines to choose al­ter­na­tive des­ti­na­tions. One doesn't have to look far to see how a small tax could have a ma­jor im­pact.

In De­cem­ber 2025, Li­ma's Jorge Chávez In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port im­ple­ment­ed a US$11.86 in­ter­na­tion­al trans­fer fee called TU­UA (Tar­i­fa de Uso de Aerop­uer­to) for all in­ter­na­tion­al-to-in­ter­na­tion­al con­nec­tions. The re­sult? By some ac­counts, the air­port lost 1.8 mil­lion pas­sen­gers as trav­ellers chose to use com­pet­ing hubs in Pana­ma and Colom­bia, by­pass­ing Pe­ru com­plete­ly. Li­ma's in­ter­na­tion­al pas­sen­ger growth is now pro­ject­ed to limp along at rough­ly 3% an­nu­al­ly through 2041, in­stead of a pro­ject­ed 9% with­out the tax, ac­cord­ing to Cer­da.

Li­ma's ex­am­ple is a cau­tion­ary tale, but does a trans­fer fee in South Amer­i­ca af­fect the Caribbean thou­sands of miles away? Ac­cord­ing to the CEO of the largest air­line group in South Amer­i­ca, it al­ready has. Re­spond­ing to a ques­tion from Guardian Me­dia at the 2026 IA­TA An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, ear­li­er this year, LATAM CEO Rober­to Al­vo ex­plained that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10 years ago, the car­ri­er made a de­ci­sion to ex­pand in­to the Caribbean, launch­ing flights to Ja­maica, Aru­ba, and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic. How­ev­er, as the car­ri­er de­vel­oped its net­work, it found that the best air­port to con­nect pas­sen­gers com­ing from deep with­in South Amer­i­ca was in Li­ma. "Many of the pas­sen­gers that we car­ry through Li­ma to the Caribbean are pas­sen­gers that come ei­ther from Chile or from Ar­genti­na or from Paraguay or from Bo­livia," he said, adding, "the ex­is­tence of the con­nec­tion fee ham­pers the de­vel­op­ment of those flights be­cause those pas­sen­gers are charged round-trip around $25 just to con­nect in Li­ma. What we have seen in the re­gion is a sharp de­crease in traf­fic be­cause of this [fee]". Al­vo in­sists the po­ten­tial for growth is there, and called for bet­ter pub­lic poli­cies that help re­gion­al economies and tourism de­vel­op and grow.