Gov. Ralph DLG Torres recently met with officials of Cape Air with the hopes that the carrier would continue its Saipan-Guam and Rota-Guam flight services.<\/p>\n
Cape Air was United Airlines\u2019 partner in operating the Saipan-Guam and Rota-Guam service, but the latter decided to reduce its flights to one a day, which could pose problems especially to the CNMI\u2019s off-island medical referral patients.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we\u2019re trying to do is we\u2019re looking at every angle to continue the services between Saipan, Guam, and Rota. Of course, we want to continue the number of services in our islands,\u201d Torres told Saipan Tribune yesterday.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day, we want to see less costs for our constituents. So we continue to work on things. This is our priority. We have a time frame that actually needs to be one of our top priorities. We\u2019re looking at every angle to continue the services,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
United is also ending its years of partnership with Cape Air at the end of the month.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, United already said that their partnership with Cape Air ends on May 31. So that\u2019s where their relationship is now. We\u2019re trying to do something on how can we extend the services or to have more number of services, if this is how you put it,\u201d Torres said.<\/p>\n
Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. chief executive officer Esther Mu\u00f1a has also written United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz and president Scott Kirby, urging them to reconsider their decision to reduce the Saipan-Guam daily flights from more than four to one because of medical referral patients.<\/p>\n
Other airlines<\/strong><\/p>\n Torres disclosed earlier that he is in talks with Japanese carrier Skymark Airlines about having flights to Saipan. \u201cI\u2019m happy to say that we partnered with Skymark and I\u2019m looking forward for that fruitful relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n Torres added that they are also scheduled to look into new airline companies where local officials are invited to visit their organization. He, however, did not disclose the name of the airline since the deal is not yet finalized.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re invited to look at what services they could offer to the CNMI. Tourism is our No. 1 resource and our economy here is dependent on them. It is our part to find ways to have continued airline services,\u201d said Torres.<\/p>\n \u201cWe must be proactive, and this administration is also prioritizing that. We hope we could have more airlines and more tourists visiting our islands.\u201d<\/p>\n He added that Delta Air Lines\u2019 decision to pull out of Saipan is beyond the CNMI\u2019s control. \u201cIssues like this, when Delta decided to change their portfolio, we absolutely have no control in their decision. It is hard news for us to bear, but we just don\u2019t stop there. We go out and seek other means to bring in new airlines.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Gov. Ralph DLG Torres recently met with officials of Cape Air with the hopes that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[979,26,2364,21178],"class_list":["post-275881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-cape-air","tag-cnmi","tag-esther-mu","tag-scott-kirby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275881\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}