Santo Domingo - The executive vice president of the National Association of Hotels and Restaurants (Asonahores), warned yesterday that the indexing applies to government fuel prices could lead to transatlantic airlines to land elsewhere for their supplies of fuel.

Arturo Villanueva mentioned that airlines such as Iberia and Air France, who travel from Spain and France respectively, could in fact turn their flights into "non direct" flights by landing in another country either before arriving in the Dominican Republic of after departing in order to refuel for their return journeys.

This is all being caused by the "Indexation" or gradual increase in taxes on all fuels here in the DR and unfortunately aircraft fuel (JETA-1) will not be exempt.

Villanueva reported that an example that if a plane had to touch down on the island of St. Martin, (like Airfrance have done so before) then the airline will have to assign seats to that destination and infact decrease the amount of passengers coming to the Dominican Republic.