Fearing that Air Jamaica´s temporary withdrawal of service will reduce a projected 11 percent growth in stopover visitor arrivals to St Lucia this year, government and tourism officials in that Eastern Caribbean island will approach other carriers to fly American tourists there. In a news release, Air Jamaica said that flights between Jamaica and Barbados, Jamaica and Grenada and Jamaica and St Lucia were being suspended with immediate effect until April 16.

Uair, Uruguay´s low-cost carrier, will begin flying to Santiago de Cuba from Montevideo this week. Up to now, the airline offers three weekly flights on Monday, Wednesday Friday. Uair continues climbing steps and is now operating regular routes to Buenos Aires, Cordoba and Rosario (in Argentina); Sao Paulo, Curitiba, Porto Alegre and Florianopolis, in Brazil, and Uruguay´s Punta del Este, with plans to reach out to Rio de Janeiro and Paraguay´s Asuncion.

Tourist boards across the Eastern Caribbean have responded to news of Air Jamaica´s temporary suspension of its flights from New York to Barbados, Grenada and St. Lucia with news of their own on the impact the cancellations will have. Air Jamaica, which said it would resume the flights April 16, had previously provided 12 flights per week between the U.S. and St. Lucia -- six flights each from New York via Barbados or Grenada and six flights via its Montego Bay hub.

When it´s still a month and a half away from the wintertime travel season to be officially over, for international air carriers flying to Mexico´s Puerto Vallarta from the United States the results can´t be any warmer, probably the hottest outcomes of the past ten to twelve years. For Antonio Alvarado Rubio, general manager of Alaska Airlines in the Mexican travel destination of Puerto Vallarta, the amount of passengers flown from December 2004 to March 15 this year has outdone the carrier´s wildest expectations.

US Airways Group Inc. is adding nonstop service from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to St. Vincent and the Grenadines via a code-sharing agreement with Caribbean Sun Airlines. Under a code-sharing agreement, passengers can book a trip that has flights on both airlines with single-ticket pricing, one-stop check-in and coordinated baggage handling.

A delegation of China´s Southern Air Holding Company voiced interest this week in expanding operations to Argentina, the South American country´s Air Transportation Minister Ricardo Cirielli informed this week. Execs from one of China´s top air companies sat down with Mr. Cirielli to tune up the mechanisms that would implement an agreement that had been inked with Aerolineas Argentinas -run by Spain´s Marsans Group- in the summer of 2004.