It has al­most been a year since Caribbean Air­lines was giv­en no choice but to can­cel over 60 flights, af­ter 93 pi­lots called in sick over the course of the week­end Au­gust 18 to Au­gust 20, 2023.

In the wake of that in­ci­dent, the air­line ap­proached the In­dus­tri­al Court for an ex-parte in­junc­tion, to force pi­lots to re­turn to work. Days lat­er, the Gov­ern­ment in­di­cat­ed it would in­ter­vene in the ne­go­ti­a­tion process be­tween Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pi­lots’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTAL­PA).

At that time, the par­ties were ne­go­ti­at­ing in­creas­es for a five-year pe­ri­od.

TTAL­PA had re­port­ed­ly sub­mit­ted a pro­pos­al of 0 per cent, 4 per cent, 4 per cent, 4 per cent and 1 per cent for the five-year bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od be­fore shift­ing to a 0 per cent, 3 per cent, 3 per cent, 3 per cent and 1 per cent stance. The air­line, in re­turn, pro­posed 0 per cent, 2.5 per cent, 2.5 per cent, 2.5 per cent and 0 per cent, con­tend­ing that its five per cent lump sum for 2018 to 2019 took in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial po­si­tion and the in­creas­es that had been al­ready ap­plied.

By No­vem­ber, the air­line is­sued a state­ment con­firm­ing the ne­go­ti­a­tions had bro­ken down and the Min­istry of Labour would need to in­ter­vene.

Since then the par­ties have been large­ly kept in a wait­ing game with sev­er­al mat­ters, in­clud­ing the in­junc­tion pre­vent­ing in­dus­tri­al ac­tion by the pi­lots, still to be heard in the In­dus­tri­al Court.

TTAL­PA con­firmed to the Busi­ness Guardian that late in June, the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al ap­plied to in­ter­vene in the CAL mat­ter. The AG’s ap­pli­ca­tion is be­ing re­viewed by the In­dus­tri­al Court. Fol­low­ing that de­ci­sion, it is be­lieved the sub­stan­tive case will be­gin.

As for ne­go­ti­a­tions, the union re­mained tight-lipped as it point­ed out that much of the process was tied up in court.

In the in­ter­im, Caribbean Air­lines has con­tin­ued op­er­a­tions. The air­line has con­tin­ued its grad­ual ex­pan­sion of ser­vices and in­tro­duced new routes as it at­tempts to move away from the dis­mal pe­ri­od cre­at­ed by the clo­sure of bor­ders dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

In Jan­u­ary, the air­line an­nounced a 2023 op­er­at­ing prof­it of US$24 mil­lion, which ex­cludes debt ser­vice. That was a turn­around from the op­er­at­ing loss of US$36 mil­lion, al­so ex­clud­ing debt ser­vice a year pri­or.

While ne­go­ti­a­tions are on freeze, it does ap­pear to some in­dus­try in­sid­ers that enough of an un­der­stand­ing has been found for the com­pa­ny to make progress in its re­cov­ery.

Re­tired di­rec­tor gen­er­al of Civ­il Avi­a­tion of the T&T Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty, Ramesh Lutch­me­di­al, said while he is not deeply in­volved in the sit­u­a­tion, it ap­peared that both par­ties were “hap­pi­er”.

Lutch­me­di­al had crit­i­cised the sick­out last year, but as he point­ed out TTAL­PA right­ly dis­tanced it­self from it and has main­tained it was not in­dus­tri­al ac­tion as that would lead to the de­cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the as­so­ci­a­tion and sev­er­al of its mem­bers.

Lutch­me­di­al hoped more could have been brought to light about the pi­lots’ con­cerns.

“Maybe we should have found out a lit­tle more about what the is­sues were. You see, at the end of the day, in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions is based on dis­cus­sions. I used to be the gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the union that rep­re­sent­ed work­ers and it was com­mon to solve in­dus­tri­al dis­putes by di­a­logue. Where the union and com­pa­ny would get to­geth­er and try to re­solve is­sues, be­cause at the end of the day, you don’t want to kill the goose that lays the gold­en egg,” said Lutch­me­di­al,

“But I would say I don’t think that the ac­tion was cor­rect. The pi­lots will not ad­mit they went on in­dus­tri­al op­tion be­cause if they do that, they will be de­cer­ti­fied be­cause you re­call the 1978 or 79 when the BWIA pi­lots went on strike. They were de­cer­ti­fied.”

He warned that, if the main con­cern of the pi­lots was in­deed re­mu­ner­a­tion, mak­ing com­par­isons to in­ter­na­tion­al pi­lots may not paint a true pic­ture of what should be the ne­go­ti­at­ing tar­get.

“When I be­came an em­ploy­er, and the air traf­fic con­trollers would tell me to look at what the air traf­fic con­trollers were get­ting in Eu­rope, you ap­ply what is called the pur­chas­ing pow­er par­i­ty prin­ci­ple. So you can’t bench­mark what you want ver­sus what a pi­lot is get­ting in France or Sin­ga­pore or Aus­tralia. Well, that’s the thing, be­cause Sin­ga­pore is a very ex­pen­sive coun­try. So some­times peo­ple use ar­gu­ments to jus­ti­fy the case that re­al­ly can­not with­stand scruti­ny,” said Lutch­me­di­al.

The for­mer Civ­il Avi­a­tion head said based on what he had seen, the Caribbean Air­lines man­age­ment has done an ex­cel­lent job in what has been a dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od. The year 2020 was la­belled the worst year in avi­a­tion his­to­ry and most pro­ject­ed 2023 to be the year when the in­dus­try nor­malised post-COVID.

“I think that their man­age­ment has been do­ing a fan­tas­tic job and at the end of day, it re­quires some kind of belt tight­en­ing and sac­ri­fices and every­body has to make that you know, you can’t have one group mak­ing sac­ri­fices than the oth­ers aren’t pre­pared to make it,’ said Lutch­me­di­al.