Caribbean Air­lines has an­nounced that it lost $738 mil­lion for the fi­nan­cial year 2020.

In its unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cial re­sults to the end of De­cem­ber 2020, CAL said the im­pact of the glob­al pan­dem­ic re­sult­ed in an op­er­at­ing loss (earn­ings be­fore in­ter­est and tax­es EBIT) of TT$738 mil­lion (US$109.2 mil­lion) on rev­enue of TT$802 mil­lion (US$118.6 mil­lion).

The air­line not­ed this is in stark com­par­i­son to 2019, which saw a pos­i­tive EBIT of TT$76 mil­lion (US$11.2 mil­lion) on rev­enue of TT$3 bil­lion (US$440 mil­lion) for the 12-month pe­ri­od.

Op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es for 2020 were TT$1.54 bil­lion (US$228 mil­lion), 47 per cent low­er than 2019 due to few­er flights and strict cost con­trols.

Garvin Med­era, CEO of Caribbean Air­lines, said, “The first two months of 2020 con­tin­ued our up­ward tra­jec­to­ry of the pre­vi­ous three years and the next phase of our strate­gic plan was com­menc­ing strong­ly. How­ev­er, COVID-19 has tak­en a sledge­ham­mer to in­ter­na­tion­al trav­el and tourism for the past ten months and our fi­nan­cial re­sults for last year ful­ly re­flect this new re­al­i­ty.”

Med­era added that nonethe­less, in spite of the pan­dem­ic, and re­duced fly­ing, the air­line man­aged to add new des­ti­na­tions to its net­work and ex­pand­ed its car­go of­fer­ings to in­clude char­ter ser­vices.

“We al­so pro­vid­ed sup­port through repa­tri­a­tion flights for a num­ber of Caribbean na­tions and re­sumed op­er­a­tions in some des­ti­na­tions out­side of Trinidad and To­ba­go where bor­ders are open,” he said.

CAL al­so not­ed that at times dur­ing 2020 pas­sen­ger flights were 90 per cent low­er than the same pe­ri­od for the pre­vi­ous year as a re­sult of in­ter­na­tion­al bor­der clo­sures from March 2020 on­wards.

Pas­sen­ger num­bers for 2020 fell sub­stan­tial­ly by 71 per cent to a mere 741,676 (371,549 of which trav­elled on the do­mes­tic air bridge be­tween T&T), in com­par­i­son to 2019 when the air­line car­ried 2,595,526 peo­ple.

Ron­nie Mo­hammed, Caribbean Air­lines chair­man, not­ed that 2020 was the worst year on record for the glob­al trav­el in­dus­try and specif­i­cal­ly for avi­a­tion.

“Re­gret­tably, Caribbean Air­lines was hit hard. From a promis­ing pe­ri­od of progress and prof­itabil­i­ty, we were se­vere­ly neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed. How­ev­er, the board of di­rec­tors and man­age­ment re­main com­mit­ted to the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of Caribbean Air­lines in 2020 and be­yond,” Mo­hammed said.