GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Caribbean Air­lines Ltd (CAL) has em­barked on a ma­jor trans­for­ma­tion un­der the lead­er­ship of its chair Rey­na Kow­lessar, who is steer­ing the na­tion­al car­ri­er through a strate­gic over­haul fo­cused on trans­paren­cy, op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy and stronger re­gion­al part­ner­ships.

Cen­tral to this new di­rec­tion is a com­pre­hen­sive au­dit of all de­part­ments and an ex­ten­sive re­view of the air­line’s route net­work—mea­sures Kow­lessar says are crit­i­cal to en­sur­ing long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Kow­lessar spoke to mem­bers of the me­dia af­ter CAL copped the In­ter­na­tion­al­ly Known… T&T Owned Com­pa­ny of the Year, at the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce’s Cham­pi­ons of Busi­ness Awards Gala 2025 which took place at the Hy­att Re­gency on Tues­day.

She ex­plained the ini­tia­tive, which af­fects every­thing from fi­nance and op­er­a­tions to le­gal, cor­po­rate gov­er­nance, and hu­man re­sources, is de­signed to fun­da­men­tal­ly re­shape the way CAL func­tions.

“We are op­ti­mis­ing our routes. We are look­ing and au­dit­ing all the routes where we can do bet­ter, where the gaps ex­ist, what we have to do bet­ter. Re­tool­ing, up­skilling, that sort of thing. But as well, this is all about the staff and we’re look­ing in­ter­nal­ly to pro­mote where we can give an op­por­tu­ni­ty to do so.

“That will hap­pen and as I said be­fore, all hands on deck. This is not about a one-man show, but it’s about a team ef­fort for all of us, both Ja­maica and Trinidad and To­ba­go be­cause Ja­maica is a share­hold­er and we’re hop­ing to have some ac­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion with them and from them and some sort of hand-hold­ing go­ing for­ward,” Kow­lessar ex­plained.

The win al­so comes as CAL con­tin­ues to re­spond to a chal­lenge from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who urged the air­line to repo­si­tion and strength­en it­self with­in a two-year pe­ri­od.

Kow­lessar be­lieves the com­pa­ny is on track to meet that man­date.

“We have a strong board. We’re ob­vi­ous­ly do­ing au­dits in each de­part­ment. We have a lot of meet­ings com­ing up. It’s about team­work. It’s about all hands on deck.

If you’re talk­ing about lead­er­ship, lead­er­ship is not a po­si­tion. It’s a process and we’re here to work twice as hard with the en­tire team. So we will get there. We are go­ing to get there and we’re go­ing to take that man­date very se­ri­ous­ly,” Kow­lessar main­tained.

A new­ly es­tab­lished Routes Op­ti­mi­sa­tion Com­mit­tee has been tasked with analysing the per­for­mance of every CAL route to de­ter­mine how the air­line could im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy, close fi­nan­cial gaps, and fo­cus on prof­itable or strate­gi­cal­ly crit­i­cal mar­kets.

This as­sess­ment has al­ready prompt­ed no­table de­ci­sions, in­clud­ing the dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of sev­er­al Ja­maica–Flori­da routes.

“The Kingston, Flori­da route and the Mon­tego Bay, Flori­da route. They were sort of bleed­ing out and cost­ing CAL a pret­ty pen­ny. And so that would be stopped pret­ty soon and in terms of au­dit­ing, we’re still go­ing through that.We’ve ac­tu­al­ly adopt­ed an ad hoc com­mit­tee, a routes op­ti­mi­sa­tion com­mit­tee. So we are lit­er­al­ly look­ing at every sin­gle route and we have to piv­ot,” Kow­lessar said.

The re­view in­cludes all re­gion­al and do­mes­tic routes, in­clud­ing the high-de­mand air­bridge con­nect­ing T&T.

“Every sin­gle de­part­ment is go­ing to be au­dit­ed. Fi­nance, your op­er­a­tions, your le­gal, your corpsec, every­thing is go­ing to be au­dit­ed. And this is not a mat­ter of re­duc­ing.”