State-owned Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) has ap­point­ed long-serv­ing en­gi­neer­ing ex­ec­u­tive Var­ma Khillawan as Act­ing Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer.

Khillawan, CAL’s vice pres­i­dent of Main­te­nance and En­gi­neer­ing and a for­mer vice pres­i­dent of Hu­man Re­sources, as­sumed the role on April 14 for an ini­tial three-month term.

He re­places Nir­mala Ra­mai, whose sev­en-month in­ter­im lead­er­ship end­ed on April 13.

It was not im­me­di­ate­ly clear whether Ra­mai will re­turn to her du­ties as Chief Op­er­at­ing Of­fi­cer.

The po­si­tion of CEO was last held by Garvin Med­era, who de­part­ed the com­pa­ny last Oc­to­ber.

Khillawan’s ap­point­ment comes at a piv­otal mo­ment for the air­line, which has been shift­ed from the Min­istry of Fi­nance to the Min­istry of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion un­der Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our.

Khillawan takes charge amid re­newed at­ten­tion on the fi­nan­cial bur­den stem­ming from CAL’s 2011 ac­qui­si­tion of Air Ja­maica’s op­er­a­tions.

An in­ves­tiga­tive re­port by the Guardian Me­dia found that the air­line has ac­cu­mu­lat­ed more than TT$1.7 bil­lion (US$255 mil­lion) in loss­es linked to its Ja­maica-based op­er­a­tions be­tween 2012 and 2025, based on unau­dit­ed ac­counts.

The re­port high­light­ed per­sis­tent struc­tur­al chal­lenges.

De­spite re­tain­ing an eq­ui­ty stake—now di­lut­ed to 11.8 per cent—the Gov­ern­ment of Ja­maica has not con­tributed fi­nan­cial­ly to the op­er­a­tion, even dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

While some routes have pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly gen­er­at­ed prof­its, these have been off­set by ris­ing per­son­nel and ad­min­is­tra­tive costs, which have ac­cel­er­at­ed since 2020.

Mount­ing loss­es have al­ready forced net­work ad­just­ments, in­clud­ing the re­cent can­cel­la­tion of ser­vices be­tween Fort Laud­erdale and Ja­maican hubs in Mon­tego Bay and Kingston, routes the air­line cit­ed as un­der­per­form­ing.

CAL chair­man, Rey­na Kow­lessar said Ra­mai’s de­par­ture was not re­lat­ed to the ex­pi­ra­tion of her con­tract, nor was she asked to step down.

"Dur­ing her tenure, she was in­stru­men­tal in sta­bil­is­ing CAL’s op­er­a­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the pe­ri­od fol­low­ing the de­par­ture of the for­mer CEO. She played an im­por­tant role dur­ing that tran­si­tion and helped en­sure con­ti­nu­ity in the air­line’s op­er­a­tions. She con­tin­ues to be part of our lead­er­ship team," Kow­lessar said.

She added that Killawhan is ex­pect­ed to build on that foun­da­tion over the next three months, with a fo­cus on strength­en­ing op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy and ad­vanc­ing the or­ga­ni­za­tion’s strate­gic ob­jec­tives, while en­sur­ing that CAL’s op­er­a­tional safe­ty is nev­er com­pro­mised.

The lead­er­ship change al­so fol­lows mount­ing po­lit­i­cal pres­sure on the air­line to re­store fi­nan­cial dis­ci­pline and trans­paren­cy.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is­sued a warn­ing in Au­gust 2025, giv­ing CAL a two-year dead­line to re­turn to prof­itabil­i­ty.

The ul­ti­ma­tum came amid con­cerns over the air­line’s pro­longed fail­ure to pub­lish au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments, rais­ing ques­tions about its fi­nan­cial po­si­tion and re­liance on state sup­port.

With fu­el costs el­e­vat­ed and com­pe­ti­tion in­ten­si­fy­ing from low-cost re­gion­al car­ri­ers, the gov­ern­ment has sig­nalled a shift away from open-end­ed fi­nan­cial back­ing.

Min­is­ter Za­k­our has out­lined a re­form agen­da cen­tred on fis­cal dis­ci­pline, op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy and ser­vice re­li­a­bil­i­ty, along­side pre­serv­ing CAL’s role in re­gion­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty.

“My pri­or­i­ty is to ad­dress the air­line’s fi­nan­cial chal­lenges, strength­en op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy, and im­prove ser­vice de­liv­ery while re­in­forc­ing its role in re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty,” Za­k­our said fol­low­ing ini­tial dis­cus­sions with the air­line’s board.

Khillawan’s in­ter­im tenure is ex­pect­ed to serve as a near-term test of man­age­ment’s abil­i­ty to sta­bilise the air­line’s op­er­a­tions while ad­vanc­ing a broad­er turn­around strat­e­gy.

His en­gi­neer­ing back­ground is seen as an as­set in main­tain­ing fleet re­li­a­bil­i­ty, but an­a­lysts note that the air­line’s core chal­lenge re­mains fi­nan­cial: re­vers­ing more than a decade of loss­es while ad­dress­ing struc­tur­al cost pres­sures.

As the search for a per­ma­nent chief ex­ec­u­tive con­tin­ues, in­dus­try ob­servers sug­gest the com­ing months will be crit­i­cal in de­ter­min­ing whether Caribbean Air­lines can tran­si­tion to a sus­tain­able foot­ing, or re­main de­pen­dent on state sup­port.