Brent Pin­heiro
brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

The next time you fly on a Caribbean Air­lines jet, you’ll be do­ing so on one of their new 737-8 air­craft as the lo­cal car­ri­er has com­plet­ed a (long-await­ed) fleet re­new­al ex­er­cise. That’s be­cause CAL's last Boe­ing 737-800NG op­er­at­ed its fi­nal com­mer­cial flight yes­ter­day. 9Y-ANU, an al­most 22-year-old ex-BWIA jet, op­er­at­ed as BW485 from Or­lan­do and land­ed at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port just af­ter 7 pm yes­ter­day evening. The air­craft will now be re­turned to its lessors.

9Y-ANU at the Piarco International Airport. Photo: Nisar Mohammed

The air­line’s 8th Boe­ing 737-8, 9Y-GRN which ar­rived in late May, be­gan com­mer­cial op­er­a­tions ear­li­er to­day. Op­er­at­ing as BW484/483, the air­craft flew the Port of Spain - Mi­a­mi – Port of Spain route. Head of Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Caribbean Air­lines Dionne Ligoure con­firmed the news say­ing, “The 737-800 NGs which have served us faith­ful­ly and well over the years will no longer be op­er­at­ing sched­uled ser­vices.”

Flashback: A BWIA West Indies Airways Boeing 737-800 at the Miami International in 2003. Photo: Aero Icarus

The Boe­ing 737-800 NGs have been used by the air­line for a num­ber of years - some were even in­her­it­ed from BWIA. Caribbean Air­lines be­gan to make moves to phase out the age­ing air­craft back in 2018 with the first 737-8 due to ar­rive in 2019. How­ev­er, a com­bi­na­tion of the MAX ground­ings and the pan­dem­ic pushed that time­line back. 

Caribbean Airlines’ 9Y-CAL undergoing safety checks at the Piarco International. Photo: Nisar Mohammed

CAL even­tu­al­ly re­ceived its first 737-8, 9Y-CAL, last year and the air­craft en­tered ser­vice on Jan­u­ary 14th of this year. The air­line cur­rent­ly has 9 737-8s in its jet fleet, with op­tions to take three more. Caribbean Air­lines will be hop­ing this fleet re­new­al ex­er­cise al­lows it to com­pete with much larg­er car­ri­ers on cus­tomer com­fort and cab­in ex­pe­ri­ence.