STO­RIES BY Derek Achong

A woman and her two nieces have threat­ened to sue Caribbean Air­lines Lim­it­ed (CAL) over its de­ci­sion to amend its pol­i­cy on the va­lid­i­ty of tick­ets pur­chased be­fore the lengthy clo­sure of bor­ders due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. 

In a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter sent late last month, at­tor­ney Richard Jag­gasar, who is rep­re­sent­ing Maa­ji­da Mo­hammed and her nieces called on CAL to re­fund his clients the US$1,646.79 (TT$11,033.49) they paid for the three tick­ets to New York. 

In the cor­re­spon­dence, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Jag­gasar claimed that they pur­chased the re­turn tick­ets in Feb­ru­ary 2020 to trav­el be­tween Trinidad and New York be­tween Au­gust 21 and 31, 2020. 

He claimed that when the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced the clo­sure of the coun­try’s bor­ders a lit­tle over a month lat­er, they in­quired about the sta­tus of the tick­ets and were told that they would hold their val­ue and re­main valid un­til Feb­ru­ary 7, 2021. 

The rel­a­tives con­tact­ed CAL be­fore the dead­line elapsed and were told that the tick­ets would re­main valid for a fur­ther year due to the con­tin­ued clo­sure of in­ter­na­tion­al bor­ders. 

The fam­i­ly vis­it­ed CAL’s of­fice at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in Feb­ru­ary, this year, and were in­formed that in March 2021, the com­pa­ny took the de­ci­sion to con­vert tick­ets such as theirs in­to cred­it notes, which would ex­pire on March 3, 2022. They were al­so told that the cred­it notes had to be used to pur­chase new tick­ets and could not be used to ob­tain a cash re­fund. 

In the let­ter, Jag­gasar claimed that the com­pa­ny’s de­ci­sion to con­vert the tick­ets to cred­it notes and to give a dead­line for use was un­rea­son­able and un­fair. 

“At tri­al, my clients shall con­tend that it is an un­fair con­tract term to uni­lat­er­al­ly con­vert tick­ets to cred­it notes which lose val­ue as the cost of flights fluc­tu­ate and it is un­rea­son­able to do so with­out in­form­ing my clients,” Jag­gasar said, as he claimed that the com­pa­ny mis­rep­re­sent­ed its po­si­tion on the va­lid­i­ty of tick­ets. 

Jag­gasar claimed that if the com­pa­ny failed to re­fund the ini­tial pur­chase price with in­ter­est and $1,500 in spe­cial dam­ages, he would file a law­suit on their be­half for breach of con­tract. 

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that while Jag­gasar gave the com­pa­ny 28 days to re­spond to the le­gal threat, it on­ly ac­knowl­edged re­ceipt and did not di­rect­ly re­spond up to late yes­ter­day.