Caribbean Air­lines has record­ed a loss of over a bil­lion dol­lars in the past year and a half.

Ac­cord­ing to CAL’s unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cial re­sults for the first six months of this year the State-owned air­line has record­ed an op­er­at­ing loss of $326.6mil­lion (US$48m).

This loss comes on the heels of the op­er­at­ing loss of $738 mil­lion (US$109.2m) that CAL record­ed last year.

In all CAL’s op­er­at­ing loss for the 18 month pe­ri­od was $1.06 bil­lion.

CAL re­port­ed op­er­at­ing prof­its for 2018 and 2019.

“In a year when the air­line and trav­el in­dus­try were pul­verised by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Caribbean Air­lines’ unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cial re­sults for the six months end­ed June 2021 re­flect­ed the de­pressed mar­ket con­di­tions with an op­er­at­ing loss of $326.6 mil­lion (US$48m). The air­line’s per­for­mance was con­sis­tent with the same pe­ri­od for 2020, when it re­port­ed an op­er­at­ing loss of $331m (US$48.7m),” a re­lease from CAL stat­ed yes­ter­day.

CAL said to­tal rev­enue gen­er­at­ed for the six months end­ed June 2021 was $264.9m (US$39m).

This 54 per cent de­cline in rev­enue com­pared to 2020 was due to a 44.8 per cent drop in pas­sen­ger num­bers as a re­sult of the pan­dem­ic, CAL stat­ed.

In March last year, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced the clo­sure of the T&T bor­der to pre­vent the spread of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Since the be­gin­ning of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the sus­pen­sion of op­er­a­tions in T&T, CAL said it had seen its pas­sen­ger num­bers plum­met, and flight num­bers re­duced to less than 10 per cent of nor­mal op­er­a­tions.

“The Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go pro­vid­ed fi­nan­cial sup­port to as­sist the air­line with ex­pen­di­ture com­mit­ments,” CAL stat­ed.

Among the fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance, the Gov­ern­ment has re­cent­ly pro­vid­ed to CAL was a $700 mil­lion sub­sidy last year and the tak­ing over of loans that the air­line was un­able to ser­vice.

“To cush­ion the im­pact of the dra­mat­ic de­crease in pas­sen­ger traf­fic and con­se­quent rev­enue col­lapse, Caribbean Air­lines of­fered car­go char­ters us­ing its pas­sen­ger planes and op­er­at­ed repa­tri­a­tion and oth­er spe­cial ser­vices on re­quest from re­gion­al Gov­ern­ments. The air­line al­so took the proac­tive de­ci­sion to ad­just its planned strat­e­gy in re­sponse to man­ag­ing the im­pact of the pan­dem­ic,” CAL stat­ed.

“Glob­al­ly, 2020 was con­firmed as the worst year in the his­to­ry of avi­a­tion, record­ing the largest ever de­cline in air pas­sen­ger num­bers, with a stag­nat­ed out­look pro­ject­ed for 2021. At the depth of the cri­sis, 66 per cent of the world’s com­mer­cial air trans­port fleet was ground­ed and the in­dus­try loss­es world­wide have been tab­u­lat­ed at over US$370 bil­lion,” it stat­ed.

In June, CAL stat­ed that in or­der to cre­ate a sus­tain­able busi­ness mod­el for 2021 ma­jor cost re­duc­tions in “all ar­eas of the air­line’s op­er­a­tions, specif­i­cal­ly its hu­man re­source com­ple­ment, its fleet and oth­er as­sets, and its route net­work” were nec­es­sary.

“In terms of em­ploy­ees, the air­line has de­ter­mined that 25 per cent of its work­force or about 450 po­si­tions through­out its net­work is sur­plus to its cur­rent needs. The com­pa­ny will em­bark on con­sul­ta­tion with the em­ploy­ees and oth­er stake­hold­ers, with re­spect to treat­ing with this sur­plus labour sit­u­a­tion,” it stat­ed.

The T&T bor­der was re­opened on Ju­ly 17.

On Fri­day, CAL an­nounced that it had made sig­nif­i­cant progress on the con­sul­ta­tion process for its pro­posed re­struc­tur­ing.

“The air­line has ad­just­ed its planned strat­e­gy, fleet size and route net­work to re­flect the de­creased size of its fu­ture mar­ket, specif­i­cal­ly, re­duced pas­sen­ger num­bers, which is es­ti­mat­ed to re­main be­low 2019 lev­els for the next two to three years,” it stat­ed.

“Dur­ing the past five weeks ex­ten­sive dis­cus­sions were held with em­ploy­ees and em­ploy­ee rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the var­i­ous lo­ca­tions that Caribbean Air­lines op­er­ates. The process was con­struc­tive and as a re­sult the num­ber of em­ploy­ees to be sep­a­rat­ed is now 280, sig­nif­i­cant­ly few­er than pre­vi­ous­ly es­ti­mat­ed.

In ad­di­tion, 99 em­ploy­ees will re­main on tem­po­rary lay­off for an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od,” it stat­ed.

CAL said im­pact­ed em­ploy­ees were be­ing in­formed di­rect­ly, with a 45 day no­tice pe­ri­od there­after.