Brent Pin­heiro

On Jan­u­ary 14th Caribbean Air­lines put its first Boe­ing 737-8 in­to ser­vice. The launch of the new air­craft marked part of a big­ger brand re­fresh that the air­line has been call­ing RE­set Ex­pec­ta­tions in line with the car­ri­er’s 15th birth­day. I’ve flown on sev­er­al Boe­ing 737-8s be­fore on dif­fer­ent car­ri­ers (those air­lines use the 737 MAX 8 des­ig­na­tion) but I need­ed to get home af­ter va­ca­tion so I took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to test out CAL’s of­fer­ing. 

I flew on the morn­ing ser­vice from New York’s John F. Kennedy Air­port to Trinidad and this is what it was like be­fore and dur­ing the flight. 

Sunrise at John F. Kennedy Airport | Photo: Brent Pinheiro

Full dis­clo­sure, I've nev­er flown out of JFK with Caribbean Air­lines so I can’t com­ment on what may have changed. How­ev­er, based on my ex­pe­ri­ence, the check-in desks were easy to find on the 4th-floor de­par­tures lev­el of Ter­mi­nal 4. Ap­par­ent­ly, there was a doc­u­ment check desk but I missed it when I en­tered the Web Check-in line. Once at the desk, the agent checked my doc­u­ments to en­sure that my tick­ets and pass­port were valid for trav­el as well as that I had a neg­a­tive covid test. 

My bags were weighed and, un­like the last time I flew with CAL, I was of­fered the op­tion to check in my hand bag­gage. I de­clined but it was nice to see that that was an op­tion.  

Es­ti­mat­ed wait time to clear se­cu­ri­ty was 30 min­utes, but in re­al­i­ty, it took about 20 min­utes with every­one mov­ing quite quick­ly through the checks. The air­port was sur­pris­ing­ly busy at 5:30 am. Tip: Ter­mi­nal 4’s web­site shows the cur­rent wait time at the ter­mi­nal. It’s a handy tool when plan­ning your trip. 

Caribbean Airlines’ 1st Boeing 737-8 parked on the tarmac| Photo: Brent Pinheiro

Once past se­cu­ri­ty, I head­ed down to Gate 3 where 9Y-CAL, the air­line’s first-ever Boe­ing 737-8 was wait­ing to op­er­ate as BW521 to POS with on­ward con­nec­tions to Guyana. 
Board­ing was sched­uled to be­gin at 6:30 am but start­ed just a few min­utes af­ter that. Once board­ing be­gan, the agent re­mind­ed pas­sen­gers that masks are still manda­to­ry on­board CAL flights de­spite the U.S. not re­quir­ing masks to be worn in the ter­mi­nal. The air­craft was board­ed from the back to the front – Busi­ness class pas­sen­gers were board­ed first and then econ­o­my pas­sen­gers.  

Economy Class seating | Photo: Brent Pinheiro

As usu­al I sat in pleb class so it was seat 28A for me. The new seats are leather with pops of colour in­ject­ing some per­son­al­i­ty in­to the trim of the ad­justable head­rests. I did find the seats lack­ing a bit in padding though. For a short haul flight, it’s fine but I would hate to do a 7-hour flight in this seat. Don’t ex­pect to have the seat next to you emp­ty though. Even though COVID-19 is still very much a thing, seats are not blocked on­board so, un­less you pur­chase a Caribbean Your Space Seat in ad­vance, you’ll have to hope that the flight is not full. Luck­i­ly for me, the mid­dle seat re­mained emp­ty so I could spread out a lit­tle.  

Economy seats with 30” seat pitch| Photo: Brent Pinheiro

Econ­o­my seats come with a 30” seat pitch. For ref­er­ence, I’m about 5’ 8” and I found the legroom to be de­cent. Def­i­nite­ly didn’t hit my knees on the back of the seat. If you need a lit­tle more space, con­sid­er up­grad­ing to a Caribbean Plus seat as those come with a 35” seat pitch. Caribbean Air­lines has con­fig­ured their 737-8s in a rel­a­tive­ly low-den­si­ty for­mat with just 160 seats al­low­ing for de­cent legroom through­out the 2 cab­ins. Some car­ri­ers con­fig­ure their 737-8s with up to 197 seats! 

Boeing Sky Interior with boarding colours set to a cool blue tone | Photo: Brent Pinheiro

The Boe­ing Sky In­te­ri­or re­al­ly made the dif­fer­ence be­tween the new and old air­craft ob­vi­ous. Board­ing light­ing was set to a cool blue tone and that com­bined with the light pour­ing in from out­side helped to make the cab­in feel quite spa­cious and mod­ern. 

Awaiting pushback from Gate 3 | Photo: Brent Pinheiro

Once all pre­board­ing checks were done and bag­gage loaded, we pushed back from the gate at 7:36 am. Just 6 min­utes be­hind sched­ule but with min­i­mal traf­fic we were air­borne in no time and wing­ing our way to Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al. 

USB ports light up blue when they are turned on | Photo: Brent Pinheiro

In-seat pow­er was turned on when we reached cruis­ing al­ti­tude. The port lights up blue when it’s on. Of course, charg­ing ca­bles aren’t pro­vid­ed but I came pre­pared... like a true Boy Scout! USB charg­ing is avail­able across all cab­ins, a def­i­nite up­grade from the old­er air­craft. Those in Caribbean Plus seat­ing and Busi­ness class have ac­cess to both AC and USB charg­ing.

Caribbean View is available either via a browser or via the app| Photo: Brent Pinheiro

You won’t find any over­head mon­i­tors on­board ei­ther. The back of the seats have de­vice hold­ers for both small­er de­vices like phones and big­ger de­vices like iPads. Con­tent is streamed via a lo­cal in­flight Wi-Fi (no ex­ter­nal Wi-Fi just yet). The movie se­lec­tion on Caribbean View was okay with a cou­ple movies to choose from. It’s no Emi­rates IFE but for a 4-hour long flight, it wasn’t too dif­fi­cult to find some­thing watch­able. You can ac­cess con­tent ei­ther via a brows­er or the Caribbean View app (down­load be­fore board­ing). Head­phones aren’t pro­vid­ed ei­ther but I had my own head­phones al­ready so that was a non-is­sue. CAL al­so of­fers a learn on the go op­tion with LinkedIn Learn­ing – def­i­nite­ly not some­thing so com­mon in the avi­a­tion sec­tor. I did miss the lit­tle ‘plane mov­ing on the map’ graph­ic though.

The in­flight meal ser­vice be­gan about an hour in­to the flight. With on­ly two flight at­ten­dants as­signed to the cab­in, ser­vice took a while as they worked their way through the cab­in. To­day’s meal ser­vice con­sist­ed of a turkey and cheese sand­wich, a pack­et of nuts, and drinks.  Un­for­tu­nate­ly, no veg­e­tar­i­an op­tion was pro­vid­ed. I’m quite used to hav­ing to pro­vide my own meals but it was still dis­ap­point­ing. The last time I flew with CAL there was at least a cheese on­ly sand­wich op­tion, though that ran out very quick­ly. Pre­order meals were al­so dis­trib­uted in the same ser­vice. 

Doubles are available as a preorder meal | Photo: Brent Pinheiro

For the pur­pose of this re­view, I pre-or­dered the dou­bles. If you didn’t know, CAL re­cent­ly in­tro­duced pre-or­der meals on all routes ex­cept flights to/from To­ba­go. The dou­bles meal costs US$5 and you get two dou­bles. I re­al­ly want­ed to love it, but un­for­tu­nate­ly my meal was just okay. The bara was warm but al­so stiff and crunchy in some spots. The chan­na had de­cent flavour but I got no sauces of any kind with my meal – no chut­ney, no pep­per sauce, na­da. The flight at­ten­dant lat­er apol­o­gised and ex­plained that there was an er­ror when the meals were loaded and no sauces were pro­vid­ed for my meal. The nov­el­ty of hav­ing dou­bles at over 30,000 feet wasn’t worth it in my opin­ion. 

737-8 rear bathrooms | Photo: Brent Pinheiro

Econ­o­my class pas­sen­gers use the two bath­rooms at the rear. Boe­ing 737-8 air­craft are no­to­ri­ous for hav­ing small toi­lets and this CAL air­craft is no dif­fer­ent. As some­one with broad shoul­ders, I found it a tad bit dif­fi­cult to ma­neu­ver in there.

737-8 rear bathrooms | Photo: Brent Pinheiro

The sink was al­so tiny and it took some an­gling to get my hands in a po­si­tion where I could wash them with­out al­low­ing wa­ter to go all over.

Caribbean Airlines jet inflight | Photo: Brent Pinheiro

I’m al­ways amazed at how much qui­eter the 737-8 cab­ins are dur­ing flight thanks in large part to the CFM LEAP-1B en­gines. The roar of the en­gines is still there but sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced.  

737-8 overhead passenger control panel | Photo: Brent Pinheiro

The over­head pan­el on the 737-8 has been re­designed with just one blue but­ton there to call flight at­ten­dants if you need some­thing. On oth­er air­craft pas­sen­gers tend to mis­tak­en­ly press the flight at­ten­dant call but­ton when reach­ing for the read­ing light so this op­tion def­i­nite­ly helps to avoid that. I no­ticed very few peo­ple press­ing the call but­tons. The cab­in crew al­so did a great job of keep­ing the cab­in clear and pas­sen­gers hap­py – con­stant­ly mov­ing through the aisle, col­lect­ing rub­bish and pro­vid­ing drinks where nec­es­sary. They were al­so quick to stop and chat with pas­sen­gers and tru­ly liv­ing up to the em­bod­i­ment of Caribbean warmth. 

Caribbean Airlines jet inflight | Photo: Brent Pinheiro

 Just over 4 hours lat­er and we safe­ly land­ed at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, al­beit with a few bumps com­ing in on the last stretch due to weath­er. I ar­rived af­ter the new en­try rules had al­ready been put in place so no TTrav­el­pass was re­quired. I sim­ply showed my neg­a­tive COVID-19 test re­sult at the port health check and head­ed to Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms.