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3rd Quarter 2009 Volume 01 - No. 5 |
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INSEL'S EDWARD HEERENVEEN IS SATISFIED |
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Edward Heerenveen, General Manager International Affairs of commuter
airline Insel Air has every reason to be satisfied. His dream of
establishing a strong Caribbean airline that would ensure that his
native Curacao would not be isolated has become an attractive reality;
Insel Air clocked a NAf 2 million profit in 2008 and is expanding
rapidly, adding routes, linking with important strategic partners to
extend its reach and purchasing its fourth MD82 aircraft soon. “We
dreamed of setting this up; but now the time for dreaming is over. It’s
time to implement what we planned,” Mr. Heerenveen said dryly.
Disarmingly straightforward, the Insel Air executive knows exactly where
the success stems from. “It’s our business formula,” he said. He
recalled the initial skepticism which greeted the plans for setting up a
new Curacao based airline that would serve the small islands. “They
thought we were crazy in thinking that such a carrier would have any
right to exist,” he said. But the advantage of the dream appeared to be
in proper planning, and in the people that were involved and with whom
the plan would be implemented.
“First you have to have a sound business-plan that proves that what you
want to do is really feasible. Many businesses don’t succeed because
they don’t research properly whether what they want to offer is really a
necessity. We researched if there was a demand, and moreover whether and
how many people would want to fly with us and to our destinations,” he
said. “We had just lost DCA –formerly ALM- and there was only one
airline flying insular, so we also looked at what we could offer that
was better than what there was. And we found that it was service; on
time performance, well trained personnel.”
The human factor, said Mr. Heerenveen, proved to be another important
element. “You need people who believe in what you want to do. Investors
who will not hound you right away for a return on their money, but
rather want what you want: something that works, that is sustainable,”
he said.
Insel Air also got the best people that previously worked at DCA to join
the team. “They knew what caused the demise of DCA: government
involvement. We are one hundred percent private, so that was something
they could work with,” said Mr. Heerenveen, stressing that Insel Air
thrives on giving its people as much leeway as possible. “We gave our
people the opportunity to finally set up an airline the way they thought
it should be done. We did the political elbow greasing to get the
business license, we got the investment together and we bought the
aircraft. And then we got out of their way and gave them the chance to
do what they were good at. The Chief Pilots were allowed to set up
things, the Cabin Managers, the Administrative people were told to set
things up the way they thought best. What you get then is a company
where everything is proper and where satisfied people work. Not only
because they get paid well, but also because they know they work in a
system that they created.”
And it works. The company is profitable. The 152 seats on the Insel
Air’s MD80 aircraft are usually all occupied as the airline flies its
intricate and unsurpassed system of routes. From Curacao flights to
Maracaibo and Valencia in Venezuela are being considered, with possibly
a Caracas-St. Maarten link. “We are now a Caribbean airline. That was
the dream,” said Mr. Heerenveen. The airline now cooperates with among
other USAir and ArkeFly, and has a code-share arrangement with Winair.
Yes, the Insel Air General Manager has enough reason to be satisfied and
he knows it. “We learned that when an island is without airlift, you pay
a lot of money to travel. We achieved what we were after. Prices have
gone down on insular flights,” he said.
InselAir will soon offer passengers more access to North and South
America with the ease of one ticket, checked through luggage, and flight
dependability. The airline recently entered into an interline alliance
with Avianca of Colombia and its subsidiary Sam Airlines, creating a new
hub in South America. Similar arrangements already exist with Windward
Islands Airways International (Winair) and US Airways.
This partnership of airlines, scheduled to commence mid November, means
passengers will be able to book a ticket from any InselAir destination
to a destination of its partners, thus expanding the reach of the
Curaçao carrier.
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