State-owned car­ri­er, Caribbean Air­lines has an­nounced cost-cut­ting mea­sures that will in­clude the tem­po­rary trim­ming of staff by 33 per cent and the re­duc­tion of salaries, as the air­line strug­gles with prof­itabil­i­ty due to closed bor­ders.

The an­nounce­ment was made via a news re­lease is­sued by the air­line yes­ter­day.

It an­nounced that in the com­ing weeks, the air­line will cut the salaries of em­ploy­ees be­ing paid more than $7,500 per month. The salary cuts will last for a pe­ri­od of eight months be­gin­ning mid-Oc­to­ber.

The air­line said the re­duc­tions will be “tiered to be high­er for those on high­er re­mu­ner­a­tion.”

The sec­ond mea­sure an­nounced by Caribbean Air­lines was “tem­po­rary lay­offs for ap­prox­i­mate­ly one-third of em­ploy­ees for three months, de­pend­ing on their role and the cur­rent needs of the busi­ness.”

Third­ly, the air­line said it was im­ple­ment­ing con­tin­ued cost re­duc­tions wher­ev­er pos­si­ble, in­clud­ing re­duc­ing con­trac­tors and tem­po­rary work­ers and al­lowances that are not rel­e­vant at this time.

“The air­line con­firms that stan­dard in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions cri­te­ria were used to se­lect the em­ploy­ees who will be tem­porar­i­ly laid off. The lead­er­ship team rec­og­nizes the im­pact of these mea­sures on its em­ploy­ees and their de­pen­dents and has put sys­tems in place to sup­port those af­fect­ed,” the air­line said.

The air­line has added that its cur­rent op­er­a­tions are not im­pact­ed by the tem­po­rary lay­offs.

“This in­cludes our Car­go op­er­a­tions, the do­mes­tic Air Bridge be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Kingston and Bar­ba­dos based com­mer­cial ser­vices and spe­cial Gov­ern­ment ap­proved flights to/from Trinidad and To­ba­go,” the air­line said.

Caribbean Air­lines said that the tem­po­rary mea­sures are to sup­port the re­cov­ery of the air­line. It said that re­duced de­mand due to the glob­al pan­dem­ic has pre­sent­ed sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges to the air­line’s rev­enue and cash po­si­tion and it must now take fur­ther steps to stream­line ex­pens­es and its man­age cash.

The state­ment said that the de­ci­sion was made af­ter care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion, dis­cus­sions with key stake­hold­ers and with the sup­port of the Board of Di­rec­tors.

The new mea­sures kick in on Oc­to­ber 15, 2020.

In March, the gov­ern­ment an­nounced the clo­sure of this coun­try’s bor­ders ef­fec­tive Sun­day, March 22 to all in­com­ing and out­go­ing in­ter­na­tion­al flights.

In the six months since then, Caribbean Air­lines has on­ly been able to op­er­ate do­mes­tic flights be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go, as well as car­go flights.

It has been char­tered on some oc­ca­sions to take and bring na­tion­als to and from Caribbean coun­tries and the Unit­ed States.

In­tra-re­gion­al flights have al­so been stymied as oth­er Caribbean na­tions al­though closed their bor­ders but the air­line has been able to op­er­ate a Ja­maica to Bar­ba­dos ser­vice af­ter those na­tions re­opened bor­ders.

Air­lines’ prof­its

Al­though the air­line’s loss­es for this year have not yet been re­leased, the fig­ures are ex­pect­ed to dras­ti­cal­ly con­trast to last year’s.

For this same pe­ri­od last year - Jan­u­ary to Sep­tem­ber - unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cial re­sults showed earn­ings be­fore tax­es at $121 mil­lion, which in­clud­ed $153 mil­lion on in­ter­na­tion­al and oth­er op­er­a­tions and neg­a­tive $32 mil­lion on the do­mes­tic air­bridge.

The air­line had al­so re­port­ed in­creas­es in car­go rev­enue by 14 per cent and year on year prof­it by 34 per cent.

Rev­enue for the nine months was $2.3 bil­lion, up 3.8 per cent over 2018, which the air­line had at­trib­uted to the im­ple­men­ta­tion of new tech­nol­o­gy, ex­pan­sion of the air­line’s route net­work, an in­crease in pas­sen­ger de­mand and car­go busi­ness to­geth­er with en­hanced cost man­age­ment.

The air­line had made US$4 mil­lion in prof­it in 2018 but lost rough­ly US$600 mil­lion in the pre­vi­ous eight years.

The loss­es were

2010 – US$61 mil­lion

2011 – US$87 mil­lion

2012 – US$196 mil­lion

2013 – $US$70 mil­lion

2014 – US$62 mil­lion

2015 – US$39 mil­lion

2016 – US$82 mil­lion

2017 – US$24 mil­lion

While the do­mes­tic air­bridge is cur­rent­ly open, COVID-19 re­stric­tions on­ly al­low for per­sons deemed es­sen­tial per­son­nel to trav­el.

As a re­sult, the air­line has re­duced the num­ber of flights be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Ma­jor cuts by oth­er air­lines

Caribbean Air­lines is far from unique to the im­pact of COVID-19 on the in­dus­try.

In ear­ly Sep­tem­ber Unit­ed Air­lines, which op­er­ates a ser­vice be­tween this coun­try and the US, an­nounced that it was cut­ting more than 16,000 jobs in Oc­to­ber, af­ter fed­er­al coro­n­avirus aid that pro­tects avi­a­tion jobs runs out.

Amer­i­can Air­lines which al­so op­er­ates out of T&T an­nounced in Au­gust that it will cut 19,000 em­ploy­ees in Oc­to­ber when fed­er­al aid that pro­tect­ed those jobs ex­pires and as the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic con­tin­ues to dev­as­tate trav­el de­mand.

Across the globe, Sin­ga­pore Air­lines said it would cut 4,300 po­si­tions, or around 20 per cent of its staff, due to the de­bil­i­tat­ing im­pact of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic on de­mand in the largest job loss­es in its his­to­ry.

Ear­li­er this year, British Air­ways cut 12,000 jobs, Emi­rates 30,000, Vir­gin At­lantic, 3,150 and Lufthansa, 70,000.