15.01.2004
New charter service to the Virgin Islands

A new direct charter service will be offered starting in April 2004 from Copenhagen to St. Croix, one of the islands of the former Danish West Indies, now the US Virgin Islands. Many Danes who watched Danish Broadcasting’s 2003 advent calendar programme “The Island of the Elves” in December got an impression of what St. Croix is like, since the children’s Christmas programme was filmed there.

The new direct route will give people a chance to visit the old Danish territories in the Caribbean again without intermediate or overnight stops. The first flight for St. Croix leaves on 3 April, and from then on there will be a flight every fortnight.   A new travel agency, Rejsebureauet Dansk Vestindien (“The Danish West Indies Travel Agency”), offers two-week package tours to the destination. The aircraft to be used on the service will be the Airbus 310, which seats 230 passengers, and the flying time from Copenhagen will be approximately nine hours.

According to Torben Eirby, chief executive of the travel agency, the number of Danish visitors to the islands has gone down drastically in recent years, mainly as a result of poor flight connections between Denmark and the US Virgin Islands.

Eirby is convinced that the combination of the low US dollar exchange rate, the direct flight service and the interest Danes generally show in travelling to exotic charter destinations will bring the number of holidaymakers from Denmark to the islands back up.