Caribbean Air­lines yes­ter­day re­mained non-com­mi­tal on whether it was with­draw­ing its Lon­don ser­vice from next year. How­ev­er, it ad­mit­ted to re­view­ing its op­tions on the type of air­craft be­ing used to fly the route.

In a press re­lease, in re­sponse to re­cent me­dia re­ports the air­line will pull out of Lon­don and re­turn its Boe­ing 767 fleet to its lessor ear­ly next year in a cost-cut­ting mea­sure, the air­line as­sured its cus­tomers that as of now, it con­tin­ued to ser­vice the route.

It added, how­ev­er, that it had been con­duct­ing a de­tailed re­view of its net­work prof­itabil­i­ty and af­ter in­tense con­sul­ta­tions with Lufthansa Con­sult­ing and ICF In­ter­na­tion­al (for­mer­ly SH&E), two of the world's lead­ing avi­a­tion con­sul­tants, cer­tain strate­gic ini­tia­tives were rec­om­mend­ed con­sis­tent with the cur­rent com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment.

CAL said the is­sue was not pri­mar­i­ly the prof­itabil­i­ty of the Lon­don route but the op­er­a­tions cost of the Boe­ing 767 air­craft, which af­fect­ed oth­er prime routes. It said any de­ci­sion to stop us­ing the Boe­ing 767s would favourably im­pact its prof­itabil­i­ty in di­rect and over­head costs by re­duc­ing the num­ber of fleet types and the unique sup­port re­sources re­quired for each. How­ev­er, it said, arrange­ments were still in the process of be­ing fi­nalised.

CAL said what­ev­er the out­come of the de­lib­er­a­tions, its in­ten­tion would be to im­ple­ment al­ter­na­tive net­work so­lu­tions to en­sure con­nec­tiv­i­ty to/from Lon­don for cus­tomers.In this re­gard, CAL said it would com­mu­ni­cate the fi­nal de­ci­sion on the route in a time­ly fash­ion to the pub­lic.