Gail Alexan­der

Yan­nis Gounaris has re­signed as Caribbean Air­lines’ Chief Com­mer­cial of­fi­cer.

Sources said Gounaris, who joined CAL around 2018-19, was based in the US. Gounaris re­signed last Fri­day, it’s un­der­stood.

CAL has been re­struc­tur­ing af­ter its fi­nances were hard-hit by the bor­der clo­sure which be­gan last year when COVID-19 hit T&T. CAL sus­tained a $738 mil­lion loss for the year end­ing De­cem­ber 2020. Unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cial re­sults from the first quar­ter of 2021 showed a $172.7 mil­lion loss, with 75 per cent de­cline in rev­enue, com­pared to the first quar­ter of 2020.

Re­struc­tur­ing plans in­clud­ed send­ing home 450 work­ers. But this was lat­er re­duced to 280.

How­ev­er, in a good­bye state­ment to col­leagues—which has been cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia—Gounaris cit­ed is­sues with a se­nior of­fi­cial.

His mes­sage stat­ed that he re­signed fol­low­ing dis­cus­sions with CEO Garvin Med­era and “it is for the best of the com­pa­ny to de­part im­me­di­ate­ly.” Gounaris said it wasn’t an easy de­ci­sion but it was dri­ven “pri­mar­i­ly by mul­ti­ple and es­ca­lat­ing is­sues” caused by the ac­tions of a cer­tain vice pres­i­dent over the last 16 months.

Gounaris claimed the per­son’s ac­tions “have con­tin­u­ous­ly caused sig­nif­i­cant hard­ship to CAL’s Com­mer­cial Di­vi­sion and that di­rect­ly trans­lates to fi­nan­cial hard­ship for the com­pa­ny, es­pe­cial­ly in the cur­rent dif­fi­cult time.’’

Gounaris claimed the per­son’s ac­tions caused “sig­nif­i­cant un­nec­es­sary stress” to CAL em­ploy­ees, “cross­ing le­gal and eth­i­cal lines which dur­ing the pan­dem­ic pe­ri­od was trag­ic for em­ploy­ee morale and re­cov­ery ef­forts” and “have re­peat­ed­ly com­pro­mised all the gains we were able to make with our de­ci­sions.”

How­ev­er, Gounaris laud­ed the pro­fes­sion­al­ism, ef­forts and vi­sion which he said CAL staff brought for­ward dur­ing the pan­dem­ic to make the air­line sur­vive 15 months of lock­down at its hub, fend off tough com­pe­ti­tion and ever-chang­ing health re­stric­tions, fund the com­pa­ny and go af­ter new op­por­tu­ni­ties while every­one dealt with per­son­al strug­gles a pan­dem­ic can bring.

Thank­ing Med­era, CAL’s board and all Com­mer­cial Di­vi­sion em­ploy­ees for the chance, he added, “I will al­ways look up in the sky for the Caribbean lo­go un­der the fuse­lage.”

Se­nior CAL of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Med­era, didn’t re­spond to calls yes­ter­day. Cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Dionne Ligoure con­firmed Gounaris’ res­ig­na­tion but de­clined to dis­cuss de­tails of the res­ig­na­tion let­ter, say­ing they were con­fi­den­tial.

Af­ter Gounaris’ de­par­ture, there’s now spec­u­la­tion in CAL about whether any more ex­ec­u­tive staff will be leav­ing lat­er in No­vem­ber.