Above: a LIAT plane

By the Caribbean Journal staff

LIAT is launching flights to Haiti, the company announced this week.

The new service to Haiti’s, capital, Port-au-Prince, will launch on Dec. 5.

The flights will operate every Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, with service from Santo Domingo.

“The new route will meet customer demand and provide connections for customers to travel within the Caribbean to and from this growing market,” the carrier said in a statement.

The service could be a boon both for those looking to travel between Santo Domingo and Port-au-Prince and for Haiti’s nascent tourism market, which could benefit from intra-regional tourism.

Indeed, Haiti has been looking to court tourists from both French-speaking departments, Martinique and Guadeloupe, and from the Dominican Republic, where it opened a tourism office earlier this month.

The flights to Port-au-Prince will start on a connection chain including Antigua, Dominica and Santo Domingo.

The flights from Dominica to Santo Domingo will take around two hours and five minutes, with the Port-au-Prince-Santo Domingo flights taking about 50 minutes.

The new service also means that Dominica will receive eight additional flights per week, along with a new service every Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday between Antigua and Dominica.

“We are pleased to be able to restructure the schedule to bring the airline in line with all major carriers,” LIAT CEO David Evans said in a release.