It cost Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) US$350,000 ($2,341,500) to put on one char­ter flight as it sought to get pas­sen­gers to their des­ti­na­tions fol­low­ing the sick-out of 93 pi­lots over Au­gust 18-20.

CAL put on six char­ter flights over a two-day pe­ri­od, Au­gust 21-22, at a cost of $14,049,000.

The last flight to clear the back­log was put on yes­ter­day.

CAL used two char­ter com­pa­nies—Glob­al Cross­ing Air­lines and Avel­lo.

Glob­al Cross­ing Air­lines is head­ed by a for­mer British West In­di­an Air­ways (BWIA) chief ex­ec­u­tive Ed Wegel.

Asked yes­ter­day whether there was a con­flict in sourc­ing Wegel’s com­pa­ny to do char­ters for the State air­line, CAL’s head of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Dionne Ligoure, said Wegel had noth­ing to do with CAL.

“He was nev­er in­volved with CAL. Any in­volve­ment with BWIA was ages ago,” she said.

At a me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, CAL CEO Garvin Med­era ex­plained that CAL had en­gaged the two com­pa­nies as part of its con­tin­gency plan for gen­er­al emer­gen­cies like hur­ri­canes, so in this in­stance, it worked out well and CAL would main­tain the con­tract.

He said the com­pa­ny was on a path to prof­itabil­i­ty af­ter be­ing in sur­vival mode dur­ing the COVID pan­dem­ic, with a view to pub­lish­ing fi­nan­cial state­ments by ear­ly 2024. How­ev­er, he said the sick-out ac­tion cost it an es­ti­mat­ed $15 mil­lion in loss­es and hurt its rep­u­ta­tion.

He said while CAL is­sued a state­ment apol­o­gis­ing to cus­tomers for what he de­scribed as a “ter­ri­ble ex­pe­ri­ence”, to date the pi­lots have not apol­o­gised for the in­con­ve­nience they caused to thou­sands of pas­sen­gers.

Med­era said a por­tal will be cre­at­ed on CAL’s web­site from to­day for all pas­sen­gers to claim com­pen­sa­tion for any dis­tress they ex­pe­ri­enced over the past few days.

He said cus­tomers can log on and list all ex­pens­es in­curred and re­funds would be pro­vid­ed.

“We hope that with­in two weeks of re­ceiv­ing those re­quests, we will be able to ba­si­cal­ly pro­vide the re­funds,” he said.

How air­line lost con­trol

In pro­vid­ing a time­line of how events es­ca­lat­ed, Med­era said CAL be­gan re­ceiv­ing calls from pi­lots be­ing sick from Fri­day, Au­gust 18.

On Fri­day, Au­gust 18, CAL re­ceived 20 sick calls

On Sat­ur­day, Au­gust 19, CAL re­ceived 19 sick calls. On that day, CAL didn’t can­cel flights but there were de­lays and re­serve pi­lots used.

On Sun­day, Au­gust 20, CAL re­ceived 54 calls.

By Sun­day, he said it was too late for the air­line to re­cov­er, as it had used up its re­serves. This led to the can­cel­la­tion of 60 flights, which sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact­ed some 5,000 pas­sen­gers.

Pi­lots have com­plained that CAL does not have enough re­serve pi­lots on stand­by, but Med­era ex­plained that CAL’s ros­ter of re­serve pi­lots was com­plete­ly de­plet­ed by Sat­ur­day. He said what com­pound­ed the sit­u­a­tion was that the sick calls on Sun­day came in three hours be­fore the sched­uled flights “giv­ing us vir­tu­al­ly no op­er­a­tions in terms of re­spon­sive­ness”.

“Sick calls on this scale were or­ders of mag­ni­tude greater than nor­mal op­er­a­tions and were clear­ly ad hoc in­dus­tri­al ac­tion. This event was deeply re­gret­table, en­tire­ly out of our con­trol and tak­en with no con­sid­er­a­tion for the im­pact on the lives of those pas­sen­gers, or the im­pact on our busi­ness,” he said.

He said from that point, the com­pa­ny start­ed to fo­cus on con­tin­gency plans.

Med­era said he met with the union on Mon­day night and they reaf­firmed their com­mit­ment to cus­tomers so that there would be no re-oc­cur­rence.

“We have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to see that this is sort­ed out in an am­i­ca­ble fash­ion. And in our dis­cus­sions with the union, we do have a com­mit­ment from both sides to en­sure that this does not hap­pen again,” he said.

“I think fun­da­men­tal­ly, peo­ple trav­el­ling ex­pect bet­ter. Peo­ple ex­pect that when they plan and they book an air­line, they ac­tu­al­ly get to trav­el on those days be­cause it’s crit­i­cal for them. And we ab­solute­ly felt the pain of cus­tomers.”

He said to date, there has been no apol­o­gy forth­com­ing from the pi­lots.

“We ab­solute­ly think this has been a ter­ri­ble ex­pe­ri­ence for cus­tomers and it’s not some­thing we ever want to re­peat again. We feel some­what com­fort­ed by the fact that we act­ed swift­ly to re­store the flights,” he said.

CAL ver­sus pi­lots

CAL be­lieves the source of the ac­tion is its ne­go­ti­a­tions with TTAL­PA, where the bod­ies are in dis­agree­ment over pi­lots’ new pack­ages.

TTAL­PA rep­re­sents 200 of CAL’s 217 pi­lots.

“For a num­ber of years, in­clud­ing through the pan­dem­ic, pi­lots have re­ceived an an­nu­al in­cre­ment to salary. These ne­go­ti­a­tions are about ad­di­tion­al pay ris­es over and above the an­nu­al rate. Any pro­pos­als dis­cussed be­tween the union and CAL must be agreed by the board of the air­line and the Min­istry of Fi­nance. So far, no agree­ments have been pro­posed or reached,” Med­era re­vealed.

He added, “As it stands right now, based on an agree­ment that was made with the pi­lots’ union in 2015, pi­lots re­ceive an an­nu­al salary in­cre­ment of 3 per cent each year. So the pay ris­es that we are ne­go­ti­at­ing for are above the in­creas­es these pi­lots would have re­ceived every year since 2016 un­til present.”

Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that the air­line’s of­fer of a sev­en and a half per cent pay in­crease (0 per cent, 2.5 per cent, 2.5 per cent, 2.5 per cent and 0 per cent) for the pe­ri­od 2015-2020, cou­pled with a shift from a month­ly to an hourly pay­ment sys­tem, is be­ing re­sist­ed by the pi­lots.

In turn, TTAL­PA counter-pro­posed 0 per cent, 4 per cent, 4 per cent, 4 per cent and 1 per cent for the bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od.

CAL has al­so pro­posed to tran­si­tion pi­lots from a month­ly salary sys­tem to an hourly rate pay­ment struc­ture across all fleets, cou­pled with a re­duc­tion in the min­i­mum work guar­an­tee from 75 to 60 hours, with over­time rates be­ing ap­plied af­ter 75 hours.

Ear­li­er this month, TTAL­PA made a re­duced coun­terof­fer of 0 per cent, 3 per cent, 3 per cent, 3 per cent and 1 per cent to CAL.

Med­era said based on that com­mu­ni­ca­tion, which the CAL team has not had time to re­view, “it was en­tire­ly un­ex­pect­ed that any sort of ac­tion would take place.”

CAL was grant­ed an in­junc­tion against the union on Mon­day at 1 am and pi­lots were or­dered back to work.

Med­era said the in­junc­tion, which is in force un­til Sep­tem­ber 28, was to put a stop to the in­con­ve­nience.

Med­era con­firmed CAL has called doc­tors who signed sick leave for pi­lots and in­formed them they could be sub­poe­naed to court.

“Some doc­tors would have been made aware that in many cas­es they could be sub­poe­naed to ac­tu­al­ly pro­vide ev­i­dence with re­spect to what is tak­ing place. We’re not ques­tion­ing any­one’s sick leave, we’re mak­ing every­one aware and full trans­paren­cy,” he said.

CEO’s com­pen­sa­tion

in ques­tion

On calls for him and vice pres­i­dent of Hu­man Re­sources Roger Berkley to re­sign, Med­era said they were re­cruit­ed and serve on be­half of the board, who in turn re­port to the tax­pay­ers of T&T.

“My view is I didn’t fall sick on Sun­day,” he said.

He said his com­pen­sa­tion was not the is­sue in ques­tion but the dis­rup­tion to ser­vice was.

“And al­though I pre­fer not to men­tion the de­tails of com­pen­sa­tion, I can say over the pe­ri­od that pi­lots re­ceived in­cre­ments, ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment re­ceive no in­creas­es,” he said.

In re­sponse to ad­di­tion­al ques­tion last evening on whether Med­era re­ceived a salary in­crease in 2022, Ligoure an­swered: “Mat­ters re­gard­ing em­ploy­ee com­pen­sa­tion are sen­si­tive and con­fi­den­tial. Mr Med­era is well qual­i­fied and suit­ed to hold the po­si­tion of CEO of Caribbean Air­lines. In his tenure, the com­pa­ny has achieved prof­itabil­i­ty and been led through a de­bil­i­tat­ing pan­dem­ic to a point of resur­gence and growth. His com­pen­sa­tion pack­age would be di­rect­ly co-re­lat­ed to the scope of the role in this com­plex and high­ly com­pet­i­tive in­dus­try.”