An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Caribbean Air­lines moved from an op­er­at­ing loss of US$36 mil­lion, ex­clud­ing debt ser­vice, in 2022 to a 2023 op­er­at­ing prof­it of US$24 mil­lion, mi­nus debt ser­vice.

This was an­nounced by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert at the air­line’s cus­tomer ap­pre­ci­a­tion event on Thurs­day, at the Hy­att Re­gency.

Im­bert said the in­for­ma­tion on the air­line's fi­nan­cial per­for­mance was pro­vid­ed to him by the com­pa­ny’s ex­ec­u­tive and for this the air­line must be ap­plaud­ed for turn­around.

“For the ben­e­fit of those mem­bers of your staff who may want a huge wage in­crease, that tran­si­tion from loss to prof­it does not in­clude the hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars of sup­port that you get every year from the Gov­ern­ment, for debt ser­vic­ing. That's be­cause one of the de­ci­sions the Gov­ern­ment made is to take over CAL’s debt in those loan arrange­ments; while we did not take it over to­tal­ly, we pro­vid­ed debt ser­vic­ing. That is a con­tin­u­ing oblig­a­tion of the Gov­ern­ment,” Im­bert dis­closed.

The air­line’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Garvin Med­era gave the au­di­ence an up­date on im­proved trav­el con­nec­tiv­i­ty. He said in the com­ing months, pend­ing reg­u­la­to­ry ap­provals, CAL will be adding more new des­ti­na­tions.

“By in­creas­ing our pres­ence in key mar­kets such as Puer­to Ri­co, Guade­loupe, Mar­tinique and the British Vir­gin Is­lands, we will now serve the Eng­lish, Dutch, Span­ish, and French Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries. We aim to be­come the prin­ci­pal air car­ri­er in the re­gion,” Med­era re­vealed.

He al­so stat­ed that the air­line will be ex­pand­ing its Jet­pak couri­er ser­vice to oth­er ter­ri­to­ries in the re­gion, name­ly Guyana, Bar­ba­dos, and Ja­maica.

“We are cur­rent­ly build­ing new process­es and wel­com­ing new peo­ple, with roll-out lat­er this year," said the air­line ex­ec­u­tive.

In ad­di­tion, there will be sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ments to Caribbean Miles, in­clud­ing trans­form­ing the pro­gramme so you earn miles based on the amount spent on your flights,” Med­era said.

Im­prov­ing the trav­el ser­vice, Med­era said the fast-track se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices for de­part­ing flights will be launched in the first quar­ter, and this ini­tia­tive aims to ease con­ges­tion, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing mul­ti­ple de­par­tures.

Al­so speak­ing at the event was CAL’s chair­man, Ron­nie Mo­hammed, who said through metic­u­lous da­ta analy­sis and re­search, the air­line fi­nalised and ob­tained ap­proval for its 2023 to 2027 strate­gic plan, fo­cus­ing on five pil­lars: peo­ple, process, growth, cus­tomers and fi­nance.

Mo­hammed said in 2023, CAL in­tro­duced phase 1 of the D' Caribbean Shop at the Caribbean Air­lines Du­ty-Free store in Pi­ar­co.

Al­so, he in­di­cat­ed that tech­nol­o­gy and au­toma­tion re­mained at the fore­front of its growth strat­e­gy and the Pay Car­go sys­tem be­came a wel­come ad­di­tion, al­low­ing cus­tomers to pay for car­go ship­ments on­line.

“This ini­tia­tive, along with en­hance­ments to our web­site and oth­er de­vel­op­ments, was warm­ly wel­comed by our cus­tomers. These im­prove­ments are all aligned with our com­mit­ment to pro­vid­ing con­ve­nient and ef­fi­cient ser­vices to en­hance your ex­pe­ri­ence with us,” Mo­hammed added.

Dur­ing the event, Caribbean Air­lines al­so un­veiled new uni­forms for staff, de­signed by Janouras Cus­tom De­sign Ltd.

Gone are the com­pa­ny’s navy and aqua­ma­rine uni­forms to be re­placed by a ready-to-wear col­lec­tion of jack­ets, skirts, shirts, waist­coats, and pants fea­tur­ing var­i­ous shades of pur­ple, fuch­sia, white, pink, and grey.