The list of direct flights to Liberia airport keeps getting longer.  In another sign of further momentum building towards growth in the Papagayo region, another North American airline is providing nonstop service into Costa Rica’s Liberia International Airport (LIR) which is the gateway to the famed Guanacaste region and our own Papagayo area. 

On Monday, November 1^st, 2012 the Canadian airline, WestJet, inaugurated the first of its regularly scheduled flights to Liberia.  The flight connects Toronto, Canada, with Liberia, Guanacaste in the northern Pacific of Costa Rica.

The airline will be travelling twice a week (Mondays and Saturdays) to Costa Rica, using a Boeing 737-800 aircraft, with capacity for 166 passengers.

According to information from the Costa Rican Tourism Board (ICT, in Spanish), this flight will allow the country to provide 34,528 additional seats to and from Canada per year, its second most important tourism market, after the United States.

According to Allan Flores, Tourism minister, the arrival of WestJet is the result of the “open sky” agreement signed with Canada recently.

The executive vice-president of operations for WestJet, Cam Kenyon, stated that this new route, which is free of layovers, between the Pearson International Airport in Toronto and the Daniel Oduber International Airport, represents a milestone for the company, which was founded in 1996.

“This is the first time in 16 years, in which we are providing service in Central America, which will allow us to continue offering our clients more opportunities to experience new destinations. We hope the service between Toronto and Costa Rica will be very successful,” he added.

WestJet is a low cost airline that offers regular service to 81 destinations in North America and the Caribbean.  The airline provides jobs to 8,600 people, and has 99 Boeing 737 aircraft in its inventory.

According to ICT, the typical Canadian visitor spends approximately 15 nights, and spends an average of $88 per day (data from 2005-2010).

The activities that most attract Canadians in Costa Rica are adventure tours such as canopy, snorkeling, surfing, and other more traditional activities such as enjoying the beach and bird watching.  And now that there are more flights to Liberia, it’s even easier to enjoy what Guanacaste has to offer. 

Here is an excerpt taken with permission from the highly regarded High-Tech Strategist Newsletter written by Fred Hickey who recently purchased a home in Playa Hermosa, Guanacaste, Costa Rica.

Fred Hickey has produced the High-Tech Strategist Newsletter for over 25 years and is a highly respected investment analyst and forward thinker.

“Escape Hatch

As you can gather, I am very concerned about this country’s direction [United States] – and have been for years. The near-total collapse in the financial system in 2008 was a scary moment indeed, and I’m not sure the risks have lessened much. The “weapons of mass destruction”(derivatives) remain in place. This country cannot continue down the path of spending massively more than it receives in revenues. Yet the huge increases in entitlement spending (which are placating the unemployed masses), cannot be continued forever. Necessary cutbacks in entitlements could be messy. For now, we have no breadlines or shanty-towns (as in the 1930s) because the government takes care of everyone – through its deficit spending. The end result of the money printing experiment may lead to inflation and a worsening in the inequality gap between the rich (who benefit from asset inflation) and everyone else. I worry that our bootstrapping culture is no longer the same as it once was and our people may react badly in difficult times.  Almost 41% of all children in the U.S. are born to unwed mothers (all races).  For blacks, the rate is a staggering72.5%. Over the past several months, some of the best performing stocks have been gun makers such as Smith & Wesson.  Not a happy thought. While I remain hopeful that we can right ourselves, as we’ve done before, there are growing risks.