Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

Caribbean Air­lines Ltd's (CAL) chair­man George Nicholas III says the air­line is hop­ing to have the fu­el sub­sidy re­moved by the end of 2012 in or­der for the air­line to be­come sus­tain­able."We would be­come sus­tain­able when we start to fly routes that yield greater prof­its like in­ter-is­land des­ti­na­tions," Nicholas said.He made the state­ment yes­ter­day at a me­dia con­fer­ence at its head of­fice, Pi­ar­co, where CAL an­nounced its new, non-stop flights to Bar­ba­dos and Guyana and the in­tro­duc­tion of a ser­vice be­tween Port-of-Spain and St Lu­cia.

On No­vem­ber 11, when CAL com­mis­sioned the first of its nine ATR 72-600 se­ries air­craft, Nicholas an­nounced that CAL made a $200 mil­lion prof­it.CAL's fu­el bill, as of Au­gust 2011, was an es­ti­mat­ed US$56.9 mil­lion.Nicholas ad­mit­ted that the fu­el sub­sidy, which was in place well be­fore his time, had an im­pact on the air­line, as in some in­stances, it hadn't been paid for a long time."But some months, they have used it, while oth­er months, they have re­paid it," he said.

De­spite its many chal­lenges, Nicholas said CAL is putting things in place to make this hap­pen with a com­mit­ment to have a new chief ex­ec­u­tive in place in one month's time.He said greater self-sus­tain­abil­i­ty would be achieved when the air­line be­gins to fly more routes that yield greater prof­its, while in­creas­ing its ATR fleet, which is more tech­no­log­i­cal­ly ad­vanced and fu­el ef­fi­cient to suit­ably ac­com­mo­date these routes.

"We would grad­u­al­ly cov­er the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of East­ern Caribbean States (OECS) coun­tries with sev­er­al flights a day."Nicholas said that CAL would be seek­ing to ac­quire 11 more ATR air­craft, but was un­cer­tain of the de­liv­ery dates, since dis­cus­sions are on­go­ing.Asked how CAL plans to fi­nance these new ATRs, the am­bi­tious chair­man said the air­line plans to fi­nance the ac­qui­si­tions on its own.

How­ev­er, he not­ed that it would al­so be look­ing for a part­ner­ship agree­ment, but did not di­vulge any de­tails.Each ATR air­craft costs around US$18.9 mil­lion.Asked if the low-cost car­ri­er RED­jet be­ing on the mar­ket has fu­elled CAL's dri­ve to ex­pand its re­gion­al des­ti­na­tions, Nicholas boast­ed say­ing that RED­jet posed no com­pe­ti­tion for CAL, as they are two dif­fer­ent prod­ucts.He said his plans ini­tial­ly was for CAL to be the choice for the Caribbean of­fer­ing af­ford­able rates, and that hasn't change.

Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj, who was al­so present, stat­ed that CAL is in its ear­ly stages of dis­cussing a Cu­ba to Ja­maica route.These dis­cus­sions, he said, came out of the Cu­ba's pres­i­dent Raul Cas­tro's vis­it to T&T last week, where he at­tend­ed the two-day Cari­com-Cu­ba Sum­mit.He said this was a very lu­cra­tive mar­ket and would prove ben­e­fi­cial to CAL.Robert Cor­bie, CAL's act­ing chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, said the Bar­ba­dos and Guyana in­au­gur­al flight would be on De­cem­ber 16, while it awaits ap­provals to be­gin op­er­a­tions in Jan­u­ary 2012 to St Lu­cia.

Cor­bie stat­ed that pas­sen­gers could en­joy US$59 one way (with­out tax­es) on the Bar­ba­dos to Guyana route and ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$39 to St Lu­cia from T&T.