Kralendijk- Bonaire may in the short term get an alternative connection to Curacao and Aruba, now that Aruba Airlines has announced that they will start to serve the routes between the ABC islands.

Aruba Airlines, which until now only flies with larger Airbus 320 aircraft, has entered into a so-called ‘wet-lease agreement’ for carrying out the flights with a company that will carry out the flights for her.

A wet-lease agreement (also known as ACMI lease) is a lease agreement between two airlines whereby one airline provides the other with an Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance and Insurance while the lessor, Aruba Airlines, in this case, is responsible for all other operational costs and obligations as well as the sales of the flights.

Aruba Airlines announced in the media today, that they will launch their first flight to Curaçao on October 23. The company said they would initially start with 2 daily return flights between Curaçao and Aruba. According to they airline, they would later also add Bonaire as a destination. The Aruban carrier has however not mentioned a concrete date as of yet for flights to and from Bonaire. Aruba Airlines has also not indicated as of yet if flights to Bonaire will carried out in combination with Curaçao (so-called circle flights), or if there will be a direct connection between Bonaire and Reina Beatrix Airport in Aruba.

The flights between the ABC-islands will be executed with a 50-seat turbo-prop Turbo prop produced by Canadian manufacturer Bombardier. The Q300 aircraft to be utilized is comparable to the Dash8 airplane which were used both by the now-defunct ALM/Dutch Caribbean Airlines (DCA) between the ABC islands.