Over the past two years and 10 months, 42,625,597 passengers have been mobilized through 343,586 air operations in and out of the Dominican Republic, which translates into an estimated US$39,245 million in direct and indirect revenue for the country and the recovery of more than 400,000 direct and indirect jobs.
These figures were offered by the president of the Civil Aviation Board (JAC), José Ernesto Marte Piantini, who emphasized that ever since taking over as head of administration of the institution, he has proposed increasing the country’s connectivity to motivate the arrival of tourists and increase air cargo capacity.
Participating as a guest in HOY’s Economic Meeting, Piantini said that, between August 2020 and October 2023, the JAC signed 31 commercial cooperation agreements with airlines from various countries.
In addition, 150 new routes have been added to a variety of destinations worldwide.
A total of 40,981 non-scheduled or charter air operations were also authorized, 22,212 of which were exclusive cargo operations and 18,769 were passenger and combined transport operations.
In commercial aviation, charter flights are non-scheduled flights (i.e., no fixed itinerary, routes or schedules), that are not marketed through the usual sales channels, but are contracted to transport a group of people with a common destination.
The president of the JAC said that another achievement is the approval of 14,452 flights under the Special Permit modality, in the last three years.
He explained that this modality allows airlines to explore routes and shows the levels of interest in the Dominican Republic as a destination in the Caribbean.
He also pointed out that currently 533 airlines operate to and from the Dominican Republic, 7 of which are domestic, 63 regular and 463 charter.
Two new domestic airlines with aircraft with a capacity of more than 100 passengers have also been regularly incorporated into the international market, namely, Red Air and Arajet.
Regarding the national airlines, Piantini highlighted the importance of two of these companies having connectivity with the United States (Sky High Dominicana) and Canada (Arajet).
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