SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

With sev­er­al new routes added to its sched­ule, Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) says it will have to de­cide whether any of the 280 em­ploy­ees who were re­trenched in 2021 will be re­hired.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, CAL’s cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tion man­ag­er, Dionne Ligoure, said the air­line man­aged to save some jobs af­ter their al­most TT$173 mil­lion loss in 2021.

About ten months ago, the com­pa­ny an­nounced it would re­trench 450 work­ers af­ter it took a huge loss dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

But Ligoure yes­ter­day said not all the em­ploy­ees set to be re­trenched were sent home.

“In 2021, fol­low­ing ex­ten­sive con­sul­ta­tions/dis­cus­sions with em­ploy­ees and em­ploy­ee rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the var­i­ous lo­ca­tions that Caribbean (Air­line) op­er­ates, 280 em­ploy­ees were sep­a­rat­ed from the com­pa­ny, sig­nif­i­cant­ly few­er than pre­vi­ous­ly es­ti­mat­ed, as part of the com­pa­ny’s re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise,” Ligoure said.

Asked if the com­pa­ny would con­sid­er re­hir­ing any of those 280 em­ploy­ees, Ligoure said the air­line would take a ‘wait and see’ ap­proach.

“Caribbean Air­lines will con­tin­ue to re­view its op­er­a­tional and hir­ing needs and make ad­just­ments as re­quired,” she said.

Ligoure said 2022 was a year of re­cov­ery for the air­line, say­ing CAL has com­mit­ted to “re­set­ting the ex­pec­ta­tions” of its cus­tomers.

“A ma­jor el­e­ment of the “Re­set Ex­pec­ta­tions” cam­paign re­volves around our fleet re­new­al and ser­vice en­hance­ments,” she said.

She said the air­line’s new 737-8 air­craft of­fers more ben­e­fits for cus­tomers and the en­vi­ron­ment, as CAL was try­ing to find ways to add val­ue to the trav­el ex­pe­ri­ence.

She said the air­line has launched the Caribbean Lay­away plan, which cus­tomers can use to re­serve flights by mak­ing a down­pay­ment of 25 per cent of their fare and pay­ing off the rest in two to 12 months. The plan in­cludes trav­el to all des­ti­na­tions, ex­cept on the do­mes­tic air­bridge (be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go.)

“Open­ing a lay­away plan is sim­ple and can be com­plet­ed in a few short steps. This prod­uct is avail­able at all City Tick­et Of­fices in our net­work and through the Reser­va­tions Sales and Cus­tomer Sup­port Call Cen­tre,” she said.

Ligoure said the air­line’s pre­order meal ser­vice has al­so been well re­ceived, as she an­nounced plans for an­oth­er on­board ser­vice.

“In the com­ing months, we will al­so rein­tro­duce Caribbean Café, our on­board snack cart filled with good­ies from across the re­gion. Our Re­set Ex­pec­ta­tions cam­paign sig­nals a de­lib­er­ate and con­scious ac­tion to en­sure that it’s not busi­ness as usu­al at Caribbean Air­lines,” she said.