Richard?Lord

Had the strike gone ahead at state-owned Petrotrin, Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) had a con­tin­gency plan, the air­line's chair­man Shameer Mo­hammed told a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee meet­ing at Par­lia­ment in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

In re­sponse to a ques­tion from Op­po­si­tion MP Fazal Karim hours be­fore the strike was called off by the Oil­field Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU), Mo­hammed said: "We have made con­tin­gency plans to en­sure that we con­tin­ue to op­er­ate our sched­ules. We do have arrange­ments in place with NP and we do have arrange­ments in place with the var­i­ous air­ports that we fly in­to."

Dur­ing the JSC ses­sion, which last­ed two-and-a-half hours, Mo­hammed al­so said there was need to in­crease add on costs on the air bridge be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go be­cause it is not prof­itable. He said the ex­ist­ing $300 round trip price of a tick­et is not eco­nom­i­cal, adding that the more ap­pro­pri­ate would be about $600 or $700.

Mo­hammed said the air­bridge is an es­sen­tial ser­vice so an in­crease in fare would have to be guid­ed by Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy.

Act­ing Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Fi­nance Min­istry Lisa Phillips con­firmed that CAL made a re­quest for in­creased add on charges. She said the min­istry asked for ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion from the air­line "to come up with a po­si­tion on the mat­ter" and once that is sup­plied, there should be a de­ci­sion by Feb­ru­ary.

Al­so dur­ing the meet­ing, Mo­hammed said two of CAL's ATR air­craft are out of ser­vice be­cause of tech­ni­cal prob­lems. He said of­fi­cials of the ATR com­pa­ny have been to T&T and the prob­lems are be­ing ad­dressed. Mo­hammed said in 2011 when the con­tract was signed for the air­craft the right to sue the man­u­fac­tur­er was waived. He said the five ATRs cost the state $200 mil­lion.

Mo­hammed said the new board, which was in­stalled last Oc­to­ber, has ob­tained a le­gal opin­ion from at­tor­neys in Lon­don and is look­ing at all pos­si­ble op­tions in the mat­ter.

Laven­tille East/Mor­vant MP Adri­an Leonce asked whether pos­si­ble le­gal ac­tion would be di­rect­ed at the air­craft man­u­fac­tur­er alone, or al­so at those who may have agreed to the con­tract. Vice chair­man of the air­line Michael Quam­i­na said the con­tract be­tween ATR and CAL pro­vid­ed for a three year war­ran­ty, which is "some­what short (but) in ex­change for get­ting the three year war­ran­ty pe­ri­od the con­tract waived cer­tain rights there­after."

Quam­i­na said CAL is "ex­plor­ing the le­gal­i­ty of that waiv­er in an ef­fort to see what av­enues are avail­able to us in so far as re­course is con­cerned."