Former general manager of Dominicana Airlines, Hugo Bueno Pascal writes in Hoy newspaper that politics has kept Dominican airlines from flying to the US. He questions the US$15 million waste of money spent on a United Nations ICAO program to revert the ban for Dominican airlines to fly to the US. The money was spent from June 1997 to February 2001, and the country is not nearer to restoring Dominican airplanes right to fly to the US. Bueno comments that countries like Colombia and Costa Rica have been banned and were able to restore their right to fly in two years time. Furthermore, he questions how nations with less resources such as Jamaica, Guyana, Cayman Island, Aruba and Trinidad & Tobago are authorized to fly to the US. He concludes the difference is that specialized personnel handle aviation matters in those countries, and political criteria do not prevail as it does in the DR. Bueno, who was general manager of Dominicana at a time it competed successfully with US airlines flying to the DR, wonders how it costs passengers more to fly the 3-1/2 route from Santo Domingo to New York than to fly from New York to France, Italy or even Sweden. Bueno criticizes that the governments have not been able to understand the damage to the traveler and the nation by allowing that spurious interests keep airline fares so high while placing the country at the risk of being incommunicado by the dominant carrier airline flight attendant strike.
