State-owned Caribbean Air­lines will soon be mak­ing a re­con­nec­tion to Lon­don through an ex­pand­ed part­ner­ship with Vir­gin At­lantic, Guardian Me­dia has learnt.

This move comes four years af­ter CAL end­ed its three week­ly flights to Lon­don be­cause the route was deemed not prof­itable.

The Lon­don ser­vice was launched in 2012 but per­formed be­low ex­pec­ta­tions.

And, as a re­sult of the can­cel­la­tion of the route, CAL al­so re­tired the Boe­ing 767s from its fleet and re­turned them to the In­ter­na­tion­al Lease Fi­nance Cor­po­ra­tion (IL­FC).

This time around CAL seems to be tak­ing a safer ap­proach to the route by part­ner­ing with Vir­gin At­lantic in­stead of try­ing to ser­vice it alone.

CAL’s ex­ist­ing fleet cur­rent­ly com­pris­es 12 BOE­ING 737-800 air­craft and five ATR 72-600.

These air­craft are short and medi­um-haul, while the route to Lon­don is long-haul.

In the pro­posed plan Bar­ba­dos will be the tran­sit point for the flight to Lon­don from the Caribbean.

From next Sat­ur­day sub­ject to reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval by the T&T Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty, CAL an­nounced that it will launch a ser­vice be­tween Bar­ba­dos and Do­mini­ca.

The ad­di­tion of Do­mini­ca to the net­work is part of the air­line’s cur­rent strate­gic plan in­to the East­ern Caribbean.

The flight sched­ule is timed to fa­cil­i­tate easy con­nec­tions to and from re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al des­ti­na­tions in­clud­ing Lon­don.

CAL chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Garvin Med­era stat­ed: “Our East­ern Caribbean ex­pan­sion con­tin­ues with the ad­di­tion of Do­mini­ca to our net­work. We have set up a tem­po­rary base in Bar­ba­dos, pro­vid­ing much need­ed air­lift to Do­mini­ca, St Vin­cent, Grena­da and St Lu­cia, with more des­ti­na­tions to be added in the com­ing weeks. The flight sched­ule is al­so de­signed to of­fer seam­less con­nec­tions to in­ter­na­tion­al des­ti­na­tions in­clud­ing Lon­don, via our ex­pand­ed in­ter­line agree­ment with Vir­gin At­lantic.”

Flights will al­so be fa­cil­i­tat­ed from Ja­maica, An­tigua, Guyana and Grena­da.

T&T is out of the equa­tion so far as the coun­try’s bor­ders re­main closed.

This move is ex­pect­ed to lead to Vir­gin get­ting more filled seats out of Bar­ba­dos which they are al­ready ser­vice.

“Whether trav­el­ling for busi­ness or plea­sure, the launch of this ini­tia­tive will open ac­cess for fly­ing in­to Heathrow Air­port and be­yond, as you can now seam­less­ly con­nect via Bar­ba­dos,” the ex­pand­ed in­ter­line agree­ment be­tween CAL and Vir­gin states.

CAL first signed an in­ter­line agree­ment with Vir­gin in 2007 .

In­ter­line e-tick­et­ing agree­ments en­able Caribbean Air­lines’ cus­tomers to use a sin­gle e-tick­et for itin­er­aries that in­clude trav­el on two or more car­ri­ers and al­low the air­lines to elec­tron­i­cal­ly sell tick­ets on each oth­er.

Trav­el agents are able to is­sue in­ter­line e-tick­ets on Caribbean Air­lines with Vir­gin At­lantic flights as part of pas­sen­gers’ itin­er­aries and vice ver­sa.

“In­ter­line e-tick­et­ing ex­pands Caribbean Air­lines’ ex­ist­ing e-tick­et­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties and dis­tri­b­u­tion,” then CAL CEO Pe­ter Davies stat­ed.

“Af­ter be­ing the first Caribbean air­line to of­fer e-tick­ets and Web check-in, we take pride in be­ing the trend­set­ter in of­fer­ing this con­ve­nience to our cus­tomers. Our pas­sen­gers ben­e­fit from ex­pe­dit­ed check-in and board­ing process­es and sim­pli­fied tick­et pur­chase,” he stat­ed.

In Oc­to­ber, Vir­gin At­lantic will be re­sum­ing flights to Mon­tego Bay, An­tigua, Grena­da and To­ba­go (via An­tigua).

That’s along with a re­sump­tion of flight ser­vice from Man­ches­ter to Bar­ba­dos in Oc­to­ber.

“As coun­tries around the world be­gin to re­lax trav­el re­stric­tions, we look for­ward to wel­com­ing our cus­tomers back on­board and fly­ing them safe­ly to many des­ti­na­tions across our net­work,” said Juha Jarvi­nen, chief com­mer­cial of­fi­cer at Vir­gin At­lantic.

The car­ri­er says it is im­ple­ment­ing new mea­sures both at the air­port and on­board “to en­sure the health and safe­ty of our cus­tomers and our peo­ple.”

Vir­gin At­lantic faced fi­nan­cial ru­in but won back­ing from its cred­i­tors for a £1.2 bil­lion res­cue plan that would se­cure its fu­ture for at least 18 months and saved 6,500 jobs.

The air­line had al­ready cut more than 3,500 jobs out of the 10,000 em­ploy­ees it had at the be­gin­ning of the year.

The air­line said share­hold­ers, banks, air­craft own­ers and sup­pli­ers owed mon­ey had ap­proved the plan.

Vir­gin At­lantic said the agree­ment puts it in a po­si­tion to “re­build its bal­ance sheet” and “wel­come pas­sen­gers back”.

It had warned it would run out of cash by Sep­tem­ber with­out the deal.

The £1.2bn res­cue deal in­volves £400m in new cash, half of which will come from its main share­hold­er, Sir Richard Bran­son’s Vir­gin Group.

Just as it was ex­pect­ed to cel­e­brate blue skies ahead, CAL is now sched­uled to take a fi­nan­cial nose­dive.

When COVID-19 first hit T&T shores six months ago, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced that the coun­try’s bor­ders would be closed to help pre­vent the spread of the virus.

Those trav­el re­stric­tions could not come at a worse time for CAL.

“This de­ci­sion will have far-reach­ing con­se­quences for our na­tion­al air­line which in­ci­den­tal­ly has been do­ing quite well. For 2018 CAL turned around its busi­ness and was re­port­ing tens of mil­lions of dol­lars of prof­it for 2018,” Row­ley said.

CAL re­port­ed a prof­it of $42 mil­lion for 2018.

In April 2018, CAL’s Med­era stat­ed the plan was to re­turn the na­tion­al air­line to prof­itabil­i­ty in two years.

Med­era said by the end of fi­nan­cial year 2019 he hoped to get CAL to at least break even.

The com­pa­ny sur­passed even Med­era’s ex­pec­ta­tions.

“On Sat­ur­day I was sched­uled to speak at a func­tion where CAL was go­ing to re­port its per­for­mance for 2019, which was quite sig­nif­i­cant, I think the fig­ure they were about to re­port was $124 mil­lion in prof­it,” Row­ley said.

“But now in the mat­ter of weeks the busi­ness of CAL and the fu­ture of CAL is now a mat­ter for the cor­po­rate sole and we will do what we have to do at the com­pa­ny and at the lev­el of the gov­ern­ment to en­sure that when this is over that we still have an air­line and we still have our staff who could con­tin­ue to sup­ply us with con­nec­tions to the out­side world,” he said.