Just three months af­ter an­nounc­ing a re­sump­tion in ser­vice to Trinidad, Mon­tre­al-based air­line Air Cana­da has now sus­pend­ed the route in­def­i­nite­ly. In a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day, the air­line said, “Air Cana­da has cur­rent­ly sus­pend­ed ser­vice be­tween Toron­to and Port of Spain for 2023. At this point in time, we have no plans for the re­sump­tion of this route.”

Pas­sen­gers hold­ing ex­ist­ing tick­ets have re­port­ed­ly been con­tact­ed and of­fered ei­ther to change their tick­et­ed des­ti­na­tion or of­fered re­funds. On May 25th, 2023 Air Cana­da an­nounced it would re­sume fly­ing to Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port up four times week­ly us­ing its Air­bus A220-300 fleet. Tourism Trinidad al­so wel­comed the an­nounce­ment on June 17th, say­ing in a me­dia re­lease it was great news for “trav­el­ers and for the tourism in­dus­try.”

While the car­ri­er has not re­vealed the rea­son for ax­ing the planned route, it is re­port­ed­ly due to crew/equip­ment short­ages – an is­sue that many air­lines have faced across the world post-pan­dem­ic. Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell con­firmed the news to Guardian Me­dia say­ing, “Air Cana­da ap­pears to be hav­ing in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions chal­lenges present­ly with on­go­ing pi­lot ne­go­ti­a­tions and/or in­dus­tri­al ac­tion, as well as, the avail­abil­i­ty of pi­lots to op­er­ate its equip­ment. It is in­deed un­for­tu­nate that, as a con­se­quence, the an­tic­i­pat­ed recom­mence­ment of the Toron­to – POS route for this win­ter sched­ule which had al­ready been reg­is­tered with lo­cal au­thor­i­ties and flights sold, now has to be can­celled.”

How­ev­er, the min­is­ter says lo­cal car­ri­er Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) is ex­pect­ed to in­crease ca­pac­i­ty on the Toron­to-Port of Spain route for the Christ­mas sea­son, as it did for the Ju­ly/Au­gust va­ca­tion pe­ri­od. He al­so re­vealed that CAL is ex­pect­ed to add three more Boe­ing 737-8 air­craft to its jet fleet by fourth quar­ter 2024. He says this will al­low the air­line to of­fer ad­di­tion­al flights, ex­pand its route net­work and re­duce fare costs.