Brent Pin­heiro

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) is leas­ing an­oth­er Boe­ing jet to boost its op­er­a­tional ca­pac­i­ty. The 14.9-year-old Boe­ing 737-800NG, op­er­at­ing as BW7000, ar­rived at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port just af­ter 11 AM on Sat­ur­day morn­ing. Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the air­craft will be paint­ed in Caribbean Air­lines colours in Trinidad and reg­is­tered as 9Y-TTL be­fore en­ter­ing com­mer­cial ser­vice.

The air­craft, pre­vi­ous­ly reg­is­tered as M-ABPP, will now be list­ed as 9Y-TTL.

This will be CAL’s 10th Boe­ing air­craft in its fleet, join­ing the nine Boe­ing 737-8 air­craft cur­rent­ly in op­er­a­tion. How­ev­er, un­like the 737-8s, this new ad­di­tion is out­fit­ted with 189 econ­o­my seats and does not fea­ture a busi­ness-class cab­in. Re­gard­ing the air­line’s plans for this air­craft, Caribbean Air­lines Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Ex­ec­u­tive Man­ag­er Dionne Ligoure stat­ed it "will be placed in­to ser­vice lat­er this year to add ca­pac­i­ty to op­er­a­tions."

This is not a new air­craft type for Caribbean Air­lines. For years, the car­ri­er op­er­at­ed a fleet of Boe­ing 737-800NGs along­side its ATR 72-600 fleet. In 2018, CAL an­nounced plans to re­new its jet fleet, opt­ing for the new­er Boe­ing 737-8 as a re­place­ment. The air­line is ex­pect­ed to re­ceive three more 737-8s to com­ple­ment the cur­rent nine; how­ev­er, due to pro­duc­tion de­lays at Boe­ing, CAL will use this leased air­craft as a stop­gap. Caribbean Air­lines has not yet in­di­cat­ed which routes the air­craft will serve.