Sunrise Airways aims to link the Caribbean

Sunrise Airways president Philippe Bayard says growth in passengers in 2018 to reach 200,000 passengers, up from 140,000 in 2017, as the Haitian airline aims to spread its network across the Caribbean.

The airline plans to strengthen its relationship with Cuba, with talks ongoing for an interline agreement between Cubana de Aviacion and Sunrise Airways.

"This is an important step for us in line with our long-term final objective which is to link the Caribbean directly or through a partnership between regional airlines: ONE CARIBBEAN," Bayard said.

As part of the ONE CARIBBEAN initiative, Sunrise aims to eventually establish Port-au-Prince as a regional hub, providing an intra-Caribbean feeder route system.

Future routes consist of Santo Domingo to Curaçao and Havana, with both routes to be operated by new aircraft arriving soon. For 2019, Kingston, Santa Clara and Holguin are planned to launch, with additional interlines and codeshare agreements.

Sunrise also began talks with InselAir in order to explore potential collaboration.