Philipsburg- Sint Maarten based Windward Island Airways International (Winair) as of July 4, 2019 will move to 2 daily frequencies between Sint Maarten and Curaçao.

Winair says in a press statement, sent out today, that they are trying to meet demand on the route as adequately as possible, after the bankruptcy of Insel Air. The carrier for some months now has been serving the route with one daily flight.

Since the short-lived adventure of Divi Divi air and Corendon, which came to en end after about 4 months, there is more demand than there are seats available on the route.

Travelers have been critical about the lack of available space, as well as the high prices currently charged by the airline.

According to the new schedule presented by Winair, the carrier will also add one additional frequency per week between Curaçao and Port Au Prince (Haiti), but is dropping the route between Curaçao and Santo Domingo.

Winair says that the new flight schedule, starting July 4th, 2019 will be executed in cooperation with their partners in the CaribSky Alliance, namely Air Antilles and Liat. So far, Winair so far has executed the flights to the ABC islands with wet-leased ATR aircraft from Air Antilles. The press release seems to suggest that with the implementation of the additional frequencies, planes from Antigua-based Liat could also be used.

Like Air Antilles, Liat operates a flight schedule using relatively young ATR-42 and ATR-72 aircraft which can accommodate respectively 50 and about 80 passengers.

Although Winair so far has been quite successful on the route between Sint Maarten and the ABC-islands, there are some complaints about the limited baggage space the ATR aircraft offer, reason why checked-in luggage from passengers often stays behind.

As of late, there has also been an increased number of delayed flights, leading to criticism from travelers on the various social media platforms.