Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Colm Im­bert, said yes­ter­day that ma­jor­i­ty state-owned Caribbean Air­lines Ltd (CAL) re­port­ed an op­er­at­ing prof­it of US$12.1 mil­lion in 2024. The prof­it, which ex­cludes debt ser­vice, rep­re­sent­ed a de­cline of 51 per cent, com­pared to the op­er­at­ing prof­it of US$24.7 mil­lion in 2023.

Speak­ing at a cus­tomer ap­pre­ci­a­tion event at Queen's Hall, Im­bert said CAL wit­nessed a re­mark­able turn­around in its per­for­mance in 2023, "mov­ing from an op­er­at­ing loss of US$36.7 mil­lion in 2022 to an op­er­at­ing prof­it of US$24.7 mil­lion, ex­clud­ing debt ser­vice."

He said the de­cline in the air­line's op­er­at­ing prof­it in 2024 was due to the fol­low­ing fac­tors – in­crease in main­te­nance costs, han­dling costs and se­cu­ri­ty flight op­er­a­tions.

Im­bert said the air­line's to­tal rev­enue grew from US$306.4 mil­lion in 2022 to US$430.9 mil­lion in 2023, an in­crease of 41 per cent.

"For 2024, the air­line record­ed rev­enue of US$444.6 mil­lion an in­crease of 5.2 per cent. This was de­spite a de­cline of US$15 per pas­sen­ger on the in­ter­na­tion­al routes due to com­pe­ti­tion," said Im­bert, adding that the rise in CAL's rev­enue "un­der­scores the re­silience and ded­i­ca­tion of the en­tire Caribbean Air­lines team.

He said cen­tral to the air­line's suc­cess is its ap­proved strate­gic plan, which is guid­ing its ac­tions through to 2027 and a key pil­lar of the plan is growth, which Caribbean Air­lines con­tin­ues to pur­sue with vig­or and fo­cus.

"In align­ment with this strat­e­gy, the air­line has been ex­plor­ing strate­gic col­lab­o­ra­tions, such as dis­cus­sions with Sau­di Ara­bia’s Air Con­nec­tiv­i­ty Pro­gram, aim­ing to en­hance its net­work and re­flect­ing its ded­i­ca­tion to con­nec­tiv­i­ty be­tween T&T, the Caribbean, and the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty.

Im­bert said that as the ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er of the air­line, the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go has stead­fast­ly sup­port­ed it, in a way that touch­es every trav­el­er on the do­mes­tic air­bridge.

He said that cur­rent­ly, each adult pas­sen­ger trav­el­ing on the do­mes­tic air­bridge pays $400 per re­turn tick­et and $300 for a re­turn tick­et for each child.

"With­out Gov­ern­ment sub­sidi­s­a­tion, each pas­sen­ger, whether an adult or child, would be re­quired to pay ap­prox­i­mate­ly $870 for re­turn air­fare, give or take mar­ket fu­el prices and oth­er charges.

"Main­tain­ing af­ford­abil­i­ty on the do­mes­tic air­bridge is a such a key trans­porta­tion pol­i­cy po­si­tion of this Gov­ern­ment that in 2019 a pol­i­cy de­ci­sion was tak­en to in­crease the tick­et sub­sidy by $105.00 per adult air­fare and $155.00 per child each way. In to­tal, this sub­sidi­s­a­tion ranged be­tween $40 mil­lion and $73 mil­lion per year, over the pe­ri­od Ju­ly 2015 and Ju­ly 2024, nor­mal­iz­ing for the much-need­ed Gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tions over the COVID-19 epi­dem­ic," said Im­bert.

He added that in the chal­leng­ing COVID-19 pe­ri­od, the Gov­ern­ment of T&T, as did many oth­er Gov­ern­ments across the glob­al land­scape, as­sist­ed CAL with its oblig­a­tions

to its lessors amount­ing to ap­prox­i­mate­ly $285 mil­lion, as well as with pay­ments to Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Lim­it­ed for fu­el.