BOGOTA—Dominican Republic-based Arajet remains hopeful that an open skies agreement with the U.S. can be finalized before the end of the year, saying the North American market will be “critical” to its future expansion plans.

Speaking at Routes Americas 2024 here in Bogotá, Nacim Yala—Arajet's chief commercial and strategy officer—said the airline, which commenced commercial operations in September 2022, initially hoped to start building its Santo Domingo hub with flights to the U.S. at the point of launch. However, the country remains absent from its route map 18 months on.

“Some people might say that we're building the tree before building the roots,” Yala said. “The thesis for this startup was that Dominican Republic has a very large tourism sector, a relatively large population and a very large diaspora, mostly concentrated in Miami and New York.

“However, not being able to go there—and knowing that around 60% of Dominican travel goes to the U.S.—it's painful for us. We can survive it, but we’re like a sprinter waiting on the starting blocks, ready for the gun to go off.”

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Arajet applied to the U.S. Transportation Department for approval to launch flights to the U.S. in March 2023, outlining plans to begin serving New York, Miami and San Juan in Puerto Rico. Yala said the airline will target cities with large inbound tourism flows, as well as those with a sizable Dominican Republic diaspora. It is estimated about 2.4 million Dominican Americans live in the U.S.

“It's no secret that New York and Miami are hugely relevant, but we don't plan on stopping there,” he added. “The benefit of a connecting hub is that you can start aggregating small sources of traffic into the hub and distributing it. So, we’ll definitely go to smaller cities in the U.S., but which ones remain a question.”

Dominican Republic and the U.S. have been in discussions about signing an open skies agreement, seen as key to increasing traffic and encouraging further competition. Yala said Arajet is hopeful that a deal can be reached over the coming months.

“At Arajet, we're building the airline of the country and so we view ourselves as a national project, not just another airline. And I think the government has really taken into that mindset and been really supportive, pushing forward the negotiations with the U.S.

“But, despite all of that great effort and goodwill, diplomacy works at a different speed as a startup airline does, but [we are hopeful] it can now happen in 2024."

Thirteen carriers serve the Dominican Republic-U.S. market at present—led by JetBlue with a 27.8% capacity share of the market in March 2024, according to OAG Schedules Analyser data. American Airlines is the second largest on 22.8%, followed by Delta Air Lines on 16.3%.

Arajet operates a fleet of nine Boeing 737-8 aircraft at present, operating a network of 25 nonstop routes across 16 countries. It expects to increase its network to 60 destinations in the next four years.