Ma­jor­i­ty state-owned Caribbean Air­lines Ltd will stop fly­ing to three des­ti­na­tions and re­duce ser­vice to two more from June 1, as the air­line seeks to cut loss-gen­er­at­ing routes, ef­fec­tive­ly re­vers­ing the route ex­pan­sion un­der­tak­en by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

In a state­ment in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Trans­porta­tion and Civ­il Avi­a­tion, Eli Za­k­our, said to stem on­go­ing loss­es, CAL has been di­rect­ed to un­der­take sev­er­al ad­just­ments to its net­work:

• With­draw­al from the Do­mini­ca mar­ket, which has in­curred an over­all loss of US$0.73 mil­lion as at April 2026;

• With­draw­al from the St Kitts mar­ket; which has in­curred an over­all loss of US$1.65 mil­lion as at April 2026;

• Dis­con­tin­ue the non-stop Guyana and Suri­name ser­vice; which has in­curred an over­all loss of US$1.24 mil­lion as at April 2026; and

• Re­duce ser­vice fre­quen­cies to Mar­tinique and Guade­loupe from four week­ly flights to two; these routes gen­er­at­ed loss­es of US$1.23 mil­lion (Mar­tinique) and US$1.86 mil­lion (Guade­loupe), re­spec­tive­ly.

In the state­ment, Za­k­our not­ed that in 2023, un­der the di­rec­tion of the pre­vi­ous board of di­rec­tors and with the sup­port of the then Gov­ern­ment, CAL em­barked on an ex­pan­sion in­to the East­ern Caribbean.

“While the stat­ed ob­jec­tives of strength­en­ing re­gion­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty, sup­port­ing tourism, and fa­cil­i­tat­ing trade were sound in prin­ci­ple, the pro­jec­tions un­der­pin­ning route se­lec­tion, mar­ket siz­ing, and fi­nan­cial as­sump­tions sup­port­ing that ex­pan­sion have since proven sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent than the ac­tu­al mar­ket con­di­tions,” the min­is­ter said.

Za­k­our said the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion set up a routes over­sight com­mit­tee last year to con­duct a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of route per­for­mance, prof­itabil­i­ty and strate­gic align­ment. That re­view has con­firmed that sev­er­al routes launched un­der the 2023 ex­pan­sion pro­gramme “were in­tro­duced with­out ad­e­quate com­mer­cial jus­ti­fi­ca­tion and have gen­er­at­ed sus­tained fi­nan­cial loss­es for the com­pa­ny since in­cep­tion.

He said as part of the air­line’s on­go­ing net­work im­prove­ment pro­gramme, sev­er­al ad­just­ments have al­ready been im­ple­ment­ed. These in­clud­ed the dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of the fol­low­ing routes:

Ja­maica—Ft Laud­erdale from No­vem­ber 2, 2025, which gen­er­at­ed US$7.2 mil­lion in loss­es; and

Trinidad—Puer­to Ri­co from Jan­u­ary 10, 2026, which gen­er­at­ed US$4.92 mil­lion in loss­es;

Za­k­our said the com­bined loss sus­tained on these routes as at April 2026 is US$18.84 mil­lion or in ex­cess of TTD$128 mil­lion.

“The dis­con­tin­u­a­tion and ser­vice ad­just­ments to the routes will al­low these loss­es to be con­vert­ed in­to op­er­a­tional sav­ings and im­proved fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty,” said the min­is­ter.