Caribbean Air­lines owes the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (AATT) ap­prox­i­mate­ly $35 mil­lion and has 60 days to pay off the debt.

This was re­vealed when the AATT met with Par­lia­ment’s Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tee (PAC) yes­ter­day. The PAC ex­am­ined AATT’s au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments from 2013 to 2019 and fol­lowed up on the im­ple­men­ta­tion of rec­om­men­da­tions in the PAC’s 18th re­port.

AATT deputy chair­man James Philbert said they lost about 95 per cent of rev­enue dur­ing the pan­dem­ic but was back to about 90 per cent of the pre-COVID fig­ures and for fis­cal 2023, had a $2.8 mil­lion sur­plus.

The au­thor­i­ty’s gen­er­al man­ag­er Hay­den New­ton said AATT’s cur­rent re­ceiv­ables are bet­ter than what it was from 2013 to 2019. AATT’s sub­mis­sion to the PAC not­ed sub­stan­tial write-offs. New­ton said the ma­jor write-off was to Caribbean Air­lines.

The au­thor­i­ty’s fi­nan­cial con­troller Carmela Wal­lace-Shanklin said Cab­i­net ap­proved a write-off for CAL of $205 mil­lion, which rep­re­sent­ed debt to AATT from 2007 to 2019 for rent of CAL’s hangar space and head of­fice.

“Cur­rent­ly, our debt is ap­prox­i­mate­ly $72 mil­lion and of that $72 mil­lion, 50 per cent of it is col­lectible from CAL. Our debtor days is cur­rent­ly 72 days and our re­la­tion­ship with CAL has se­vere­ly im­proved over the past cou­ple months in terms of their debt re­pay­ment and we ex­pect that our $72 mil­lion in debt will be col­lect­ed,” she added.

“CAL is 50 per cent of our $72 mil­lion, so they’re a lit­tle over $35 mil­lion in debt to us and CAL’s debt is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 60 days out­stand­ing.”

On if there were any debt can­cel­la­tions, Wal­lace-Shanklin said, “Dur­ing the pe­ri­od un­der ques­tion, Cab­i­net would have al­so ap­proved a write-off back in 2017-18 of $30 mil­lion and of that, $30 mil­lion, ap­prox­i­mate­ly $15-16 mil­lion, would have re­lat­ed to BWIA 1995 Ltd. These are old­er debts than the year 2000 when BWIA would have changed, they’d have changed many times over the pe­ri­od. So those would have been very old debts. Then we’d have had oth­er air­lines that went bank­rupt like Guyana Air­ways, Air Caribbean and Li­at—Li­at had an old debt al­so.”

“So debt, pri­or to the year 2000, all of that was writ­ten off with Cab­i­net ap­proval in 2017 and 2018 to try to clean up the re­ceiv­ables of those very old air­lines and very old debts. That’s in 2018,” she added.

Law on mar­i­jua­na a prob­lem for au­thor­i­ty

On re­cruit­ment qual­i­ty, New­ton said in re­cent times, AATT had amend­ed the process with se­cu­ri­ty di­vi­sions and added poly­graph­ing to the back­ground and due dili­gence test­ing.

“And (poly­graph­ing) has caused a chal­lenge—we’ve had a high fail­ure rate. That’s been a chal­lenge and it’s af­fect­ed our en­gage­ment in terms of the se­cu­ri­ty de­part­ment,” the gen­er­al man­ag­er said.

He added, “One of the chal­lenges that’s hap­pened in T&T is with re­spect to the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion—of an ex­tent—of mar­i­jua­na. Get­ting in­to the AATT, it’s a ze­ro tol­er­ance with re­spect to that giv­en our en­vi­ron­ment, and we’ve had to weed out a lot of peo­ple who oth­er­wise would have been a good fit. Even in terms of the ques­tion­ing, you pick it up in terms of the poly­graph­ing. That’s been a chal­lenge for us, oth­er en­ti­ties in­tro­duc­ing poly­graph­ing, that’ll be a chal­lenge they’ll have to deal with.”

AATT is now re­cruit­ing avi­a­tion screen­ing of­fi­cers in To­ba­go for the air­port there, which will have a com­bi­na­tion of these of­fi­cers and es­tate con­sta­bles, which Pi­ar­co (In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port) al­so has. Back­ground checks are al­so done at oth­er points be­yond en­try.

On in­con­sis­ten­cies re­gard­ing what hap­pens with pas­sen­ger flow with bor­der con­trol—Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion and Cus­toms and Ex­cise—New­ton said AATT had tried moral sua­sion and as­sist­ing with per­son­nel.

“And some­times we’re told ‘that ent your busi­ness’. But it’s a prob­lem for us as an air­port ser­vice provider.

“For a time in Jan­u­ary, I couldn’t sleep be­cause I’d get calls at 2 am on what was hap­pen­ing. I’d say it’s be­yond my re­mit to ac­tive­ly help with this. It’s a chal­lenge we as a na­tion have to find a so­lu­tion to. It’s a sig­nif­i­cant bug­bear for T&T’s de­vel­op­ment in terms of pas­sen­ger move­ments,” he said, adding the au­thor­i­ty will as­sist in 2024 with bag drops and ex­pe­dit­ing se­cu­ri­ty.

AATT not re­spon­si­ble for air­port’s re­nam­ing

The mat­ter of re­nam­ing the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port to ho­n­our late for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day is not be­fore the AATT for con­sid­er­a­tion.

PAC mem­ber Jear­lean John asked if the is­sue of chang­ing the air­port’s name to ho­n­our Pan­day was be­ing giv­en any thought by the au­thor­i­ty.

Since Pan­day’s death, there have been calls from busi­ness­peo­ple, for­mer politi­cians and mem­bers of the pub­lic to have the air­port’s name changed to the “Bas­deo Pan­day In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.”

New­ton said the is­sue was not cur­rent­ly en­gag­ing the AATT’s at­ten­tion.

“In any event as the air­port op­er­a­tor, as the man­age­ment and Board of AATT, the nam­ing of the air­port is re­al­ly for the own­ers to de­ter­mine, so it’s re­al­ly not some­thing be­fore us,” he said.