service is not dropped after one season.

TWA said it was committed to making their St. Louis to Bermuda flight a success and would beef up the marketing push to try and halt disappointing seat sales.

The move came after Tourism Minister David Allen revealed load factors for the twice weekly service in its first month of operation.

In a written Parliamentary answer to Shadow Tourism Minister David Dodwell's questions, Mr. Allen revealed the flight had as few as six people on it at one point, with the most being about 50.

Load factors were as low as four percent for the 145-seat aircraft, with many flights having forty or less people travelling to and from the Island.

Yesterday, TWA remained upbeat about the situation, and vowed to try and boost seat bookings.

Media manager Julia Bishop-Cross said: "While it's obvious the load factor is not where we would like it to be, TWA is committed to making this flight work.

"TWA and the Government of Bermuda are both renewing marketing efforts.'' TWA said it would not release load factor figures but statistics for the first month of the flight were given in Mr. Allen's response on Friday.

At the flight's launch on May 10, a spokesman said they would need to be filling 70 percent of seats by the end of the season in October in order to make sure the service runs again next year.

However, it was pointed out that the route was starting from ground zero.

Ms Bishop-Cross did not go into details about how they were going to renew marketing efforts.

The Department of Tourism has already pumped $1.1 million into supporting the new flights.

The money, which has also gone to support the second Delta flight out of Atlanta, has supported advertising in several mid-west and west coast newspapers.

In addition, tourism officials and hoteliers embarked upon road shows in both the mid-west and west coast regions to herald the new services.

And cooperative marketing up to a value of $20,000 is being made with selected tour operators.

Tourism Director Richard Calderon could not be reached for comment last night.