Brent Pin­heiro

Days af­ter T&T signed an Air Ser­vices Agree­ment with Pana­ma on the side­lines of the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly in New York, lo­cal car­ri­er Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) is con­sid­er­ing of­fer­ing flights to the Cen­tral Amer­i­can na­tion.

Re­spond­ing via What­sApp to ques­tions sent by Guardian Me­dia, CAL chair­man Rey­na Kow­lessar said the air­line is analysing the eco­nom­ics of the route and will “make a de­ci­sion on op­er­at­ing to Pana­ma soon”.

Kow­lessar said if the de­ci­sion is made to op­er­ate to Pana­ma, the next step would be to file the nec­es­sary reg­u­la­to­ry pa­per­work.

On Tues­day, Pana­man­ian am­bas­sador to T&T Diomedes Car­les met with Act­ing CAL CEO Var­ma Khillawan as part of a cour­tesy vis­it.

In a state­ment post­ed to so­cial me­dia fol­low­ing the meet­ing, the Pana­man­ian Em­bassy said Caribbean Air­lines was for­mal­ly in­vit­ed to es­tab­lish op­er­a­tions in Pana­ma, an in­vi­ta­tion that had “al­ready re­ceived Pana­man­ian ap­proval”.

If ap­proved, this would be CAL’s first Cen­tral Amer­i­can route. How­ev­er, such a move would put the car­ri­er in di­rect com­pe­ti­tion with Latin Amer­i­can heavy­weight Co­pa Air­lines, which al­ready of­fers up to ten week­ly flights to Trinidad.