Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) has an­nounced the rein­tro­duc­tion of ser­vice be­tween Kingston, Ja­maica and Fort Laud­erdale in Flori­da from De­cem­ber 15, 2024.

The all-econ­o­my flights are set to op­er­ate three times a week on Tues­days, Thurs­days and Sat­ur­days, the air­line said in a state­ment yes­ter­day.

It added that this re-es­tab­lished route will en­hance con­nec­tiv­i­ty for pas­sen­gers trav­el­ling be­tween Ja­maica and South Flori­da, pro­vid­ing in­creased op­tions and con­ve­nience.

CEO of CAL, Garvin Med­era, em­pha­sised that the air­line’s de­ci­sion to rein­tro­duce this route was based on cus­tomer de­mand and di­rect feed­back from the Ja­maican di­as­po­ra, both in the Caribbean and abroad.

“The re­turn of ser­vice be­tween Kingston and Fort Laud­erdale is a di­rect re­sponse to our cus­tomers’ needs. At Caribbean Air­lines, we are com­mit­ted to con­nect­ing the Caribbean re­gion more ef­fec­tive­ly, wher­ev­er re­sources al­low, to en­sure that our pas­sen­gers have greater ac­cess to key des­ti­na­tions that are im­por­tant to them,” he said.

The air­line added that with this ad­di­tion­al ser­vice, Caribbean Air­lines con­tin­ues to strength­en its mis­sion to con­nect the re­gion to it­self and to pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tions world-wide, es­pe­cial­ly those that hold sig­nif­i­cant val­ue for Caribbean na­tion­als and the wider di­as­po­ra com­mu­ni­ty.

CAL said flights be­tween Kingston and Fort Laud­erdale are avail­able for book­ing im­me­di­ate­ly through the Caribbean Air­lines web­site, www.caribbean-air­lines.com, as well as through the air­line’s trav­el agency part­ners.

CAL added that cus­tomers can al­so look out for a spe­cial in­tro­duc­to­ry fare sale, from to­day.

Ac­cord­ing to the list of State com­pa­ny di­rec­tors, pub­lished by the Min­istry of Fi­nance in Jan­u­ary 2024, the Gov­ern­ment of Ja­maica owns 11.94 per cent of CAL, while the T&T Gov­ern­ment owns 88.06 per cent of the air­line.

The on­ly Ja­maican on the CAL board is an at­tor­ney named Adam Moss. The air­line’s board is chaired by Shameer Mo­hammed and com­pris­es Michael Quam­i­na, Dr Chris Ma­haraj, Enid Zephyrine and Moss.

In Oc­to­ber, CAL made its in­au­gur­al flight to the British Vir­gin Is­lands (CAL). The air­line will op­er­ate four flights a week to Tor­to­la, which is its 24th des­ti­na­tion.

The air­line launched a ser­vice to Puer­to Ri­co in Ju­ly.

T&T’s na­tion­al air­line plans to con­tin­ue to ex­pand its foot­print in the re­gion with routes to the French Caribbean. In De­cem­ber, the lo­cal car­ri­er will be­gin op­er­at­ing flights to Mar­tinique and Guade­loupe, both French over­seas de­part­ments in the East­ern Caribbean.

Ser­vice to Fort-de-France (FDF), Mar­tinique be­gins on De­cem­ber 3, 2024 and ser­vice to Pointe-à-Pitre (PTP), Guade­loupe be­gins a few days lat­er on De­cem­ber 7, 2024. CAL will fly four times week­ly to both is­lands – Tues­days, Fri­days, Sat­ur­days, and Sun­days to Mar­tinique and Sun­days, Wednes­days, Thurs­days and Sat­ur­days to Guade­loupe.

In Jan­u­ary, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert an­nounced, at the air­line’s cus­tomer ap­pre­ci­a­tion event at the Hy­att Re­gency, that the air­line had moved from a 2022 op­er­at­ing loss of US$36 mil­lion, ex­clud­ing debt ser­vice, to a 2023 op­er­at­ing prof­it of US$24 mil­lion, al­so ex­clud­ing debt ser­vice.

“For the ben­e­fit of those mem­bers of your staff who may want a huge wage in­crease, that tran­si­tion from loss to prof­it does not in­clude the hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars of sup­port that you get every year from the Gov­ern­ment, for debt ser­vic­ing.

“That’s be­cause one of the de­ci­sions the Gov­ern­ment made is to take over CAL’s debt in those loan arrange­ments; while we did not take it over to­tal­ly, we pro­vid­ed debt ser­vic­ing. That is a con­tin­u­ing oblig­a­tion of the Gov­ern­ment,” Im­bert said in Jan­u­ary.

On Tues­day, Im­bert said the Min­istry of Fi­nance con­tin­ues to sub­sidise the air­line to the tune of hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars a year.