Brent Pin­heiro

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

Caribbean Air­lines (CAL), the re­gion’s largest car­ri­er, will sus­pend two re­cent­ly opened routes and sus­pend its Bar­ba­dos base of op­er­a­tions ear­ly next year, deal­ing a blow to re­gion­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty. Ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 10, the air­line will sus­pend its routes to San Juan, Puer­to Ri­co, and Tor­to­la, British Vir­gin Is­lands. CAL will al­so sus­pend its base op­er­a­tions at Bar­ba­dos’ Grant­ley Adams In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in Feb­ru­ary 2026. Flights orig­i­nat­ing out of Bar­ba­dos will be resched­uled and re­timed to op­er­ate out of Trinidad’s Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in­stead. As a re­sult, all crews based in Bar­ba­dos will be re­quired to op­er­ate flights out of the Port of Spain hub.

In an in­ter­nal memo to staff, seen by Guardian Me­dia, the com­pa­ny said the move was part of an “on­go­ing net­work op­ti­miza­tion pro­gram, which in­volves con­tin­u­ous eval­u­a­tion of routes to en­sure the sus­tain­abil­i­ty and ef­fi­cien­cy of op­er­a­tions across its net­work.”

This is the fourth route CAL’s man­age­ment has ei­ther cut or sus­pend­ed since the in­stal­la­tion of a new board head­ed by chair­man Rey­na Kow­lessar. On No­vem­ber 2, the air­line dis­con­tin­ued ser­vices con­nect­ing Ja­maica (Kingston and Mon­tego Bay) with Fort Laud­erdale, Flori­da. Like the Ja­maica-Flori­da routes, sources tell Guardian Me­dia the Puer­to Ri­co and BVI routes have suf­fered from poor load fac­tors.

Speak­ing with re­porters sev­er­al weeks ago, Kow­lessar said the air­line is re­view­ing every route in its net­work. “We are op­ti­mis­ing our routes. We are look­ing and au­dit­ing all the routes where we can do bet­ter, where the gaps ex­ist, what we have to do bet­ter,” she said. Ac­cord­ing to Kow­lessar, a routes op­ti­mi­sa­tion com­mit­tee has been es­tab­lished to ful­fill that man­date.

The Puer­to Ri­co and BVI routes were part of a net­work ex­pan­sion dri­ve spear­head­ed by for­mer CEO Garvin Med­era. In line with the air­line’s 2023-2027 strate­gic growth plan, the air­line leased sev­er­al ATR 72-600s to ex­pand its pres­ence in the re­gion. In 2024 alone, the air­line added Puer­to Ri­co, the British Vir­gin Is­lands, Mar­tinique, and Guade­loupe to its net­work. CAL al­so brought back its Mon­tego Bay–Fort Laud­erdale route in De­cem­ber 2024 and the Kingston–Fort Laud­erdale ser­vice in ear­ly 2025. Both Ja­maica-Flori­da routes were un­able to at­tract suf­fi­cient pas­sen­gers. Kow­lessar lat­er re­vealed CAL was pay­ing the price. “The Kingston-Flori­da route and the Mon­tego Bay-Flori­da route. They were sort of bleed­ing out and cost­ing CAL a pret­ty pen­ny,” she said.