TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands Cape Air stopped commuter books to Tortola

I know this was posted a while ago but does anyone know a way around it. You can only purchase a Cape Air commuter book from San Juan to Tortola and vice versa if you are in Tortola. They changed it 4 to 8 months ago. You can't buy a commuter book on the phone or on the internet to and from San Juan and Tortola. We have 16 going to Tortola from San Juan in Feb 2018.

I asked this question at the airport a few weeks ago. I was told that you could call and order the book over the phone but it had to be picked up at the Tortola airport. Best bet is probably to order it and have someone on Tortola pick it up and fedex it to you. There are some "errand/messenger" services on Tortola that could probably do it for you.

At least you can still get them. I thought they just didn't offer them anymore. I guess I'll have to call them as I have 2 coupons that expire in Sept and we aren't planning on going until Nov.

Anyone needs any before then, message me.

Yup, heard it explained as "if you're a commuter, no problem picking it up at the airport, is it?"

Unless you are a commuter from San Juan?

I spoke to InterCaribbean. They were terrific. No need for Cape Air any longer. They blew Cape Air out of the water with customer service and professionalism.

Just looked at their prices, I'll have to look at this next trip. About $150 less then Cape Air round trip. That's $450 savings for the 3 of us using the coupon book. We've been very happy with Cape Air over the years, but that is quite a difference and with the coupon book we have to buy 10 one way all up front.

Keep in mind AirCaribbean's pricing is intro pricing as they expand and try and capture market share. Great for the moment but may not last long. The equipment they are using is not a great short runway aircraft especially if the runway is wet. Here is a summary for a similar pairing. I have watched them land on the wet runway at EIS and unload what looked like a full load.

Molokai - Maui looks close: perhaps 46NM unless I've missed something. That should take a lot less than 45-60 minutes.

As an indicative look: EMB-120, off a 4500' runway in 30 degC temperature (ISA+15degC), elevation 400', nil wind, dry runway, PW118A engines: should be able to takeoff at 10800kg. That will take 22 pax and 3 crew on that leg, which is a bit less than full capacity.

However, I keep bumping up against questions that can only be answered by an aircraft performance engineer (which I am not). The wet runway performance will be less than dry, which means fewer pax. The landing distance graphs show that on a wet runway, it will severely limit the weight and pax load (and may be worse than takeoff). There has been no consideration yet of climb gradients. And not all EMB120s have the more powerful 118A engines.

All in all - the operation is a possibility but is marginal and only a close look by an aircraft performance engineer can give you the correct answer. Time to pay someone to do some work for you.
G