Trinidad and To­ba­go's na­tion­al flag car­ri­er will start re­plac­ing its age­ing fleet of Bom­bardier Q-300s and adding fre­quen­cies, routes and pas­sen­ger ca­pac­i­ty

State-owned Caribbean Air­lines Lim­it­ed (CAL) yes­ter­day took de­liv­ery in Toulouse of its first ATR 72-600 air­craft. The Port-of-Spain-based car­ri­er, which be­came one of the very first op­er­a­tors of the new 'ATR -600 se­ries', booked a US$ 200 mil­lion-val­ued con­tract ear­li­er this year for the pur­chase of nine of these air­craft. The air­craft are con­fig­ured with 68 seats and equipped with the new ATR-600s stan­dards of com­fort, in­clud­ing in-flight en­ter­tain­ment. In a state­ment yes­ter­day, ATR said: "With this new ATR 72-600 de­liv­ered to­day, Caribbean Air­lines will start re­plac­ing its fleet of five 50-seat Q-300s and in­tro­duc­ing newest and most tech­no­log­i­cal­ly ad­vanced tur­bo­props in­to its do­mes­tic routes.

"The air­line will al­so add pas­sen­ger ca­pac­i­ty and de­vel­op new routes and fre­quen­cies with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go." ATR is well es­tab­lished in the Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean re­gion, with some 140 air­craft in op­er­a­tion, plus more than 60 on or­der. Com­ment­ing on to­day's first de­liv­ery, Robert Cor­bie, Act­ing chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Caribbean Air­lines de­clared: "The in­tro­duc­tion of this very first ATR 72-600 air­craft marks a re­al mile­stone in our na­tion­al avi­a­tion. It rep­re­sents the ar­rival of the most mod­ern and cost-ef­fi­cient re­gion­al tur­bo­prop air­craft in­to our coun­try. It will bring even bet­ter con­nec­tiv­i­ty and com­fort to our pas­sen­gers, at op­ti­mal fares."