Brent Pin­heiro 

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt 

Just months af­ter Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) restart­ed flights be­tween Mon­tego Bay/Kingston and Fort Laud­erdale, the air­line is end­ing the ser­vice due to poor per­for­mance. In a me­dia re­lease the air­line said the de­ci­sion was tak­en due to the “cur­rent eco­nom­ic con­di­tions im­pact­ing the Ja­maica–Fort Laud­erdale mar­ket” which re­quires the air­line to “re­al­lo­cate re­sources”. The last ser­vice will op­er­ate on No­vem­ber 1st, 2025. CAL has of­fered pas­sen­gers hold­ing con­firmed tick­ets a full re­fund or the op­tion to place their tick­et val­ue on hold to be used to­ward fu­ture trav­el. 

CAL has been op­er­at­ing flights from Kingston to Fort Laud­erdale since De­cem­ber 2024, and Mon­tego Bay to Fort Laud­erdale since March 2025 us­ing a leased all-econ­o­my class Boe­ing 737-800NG with 189 seats. The air­craft, which was based in Ja­maica, will re­turn to T&T and used for sea­son­al win­ter flights un­til Jan­u­ary 2026. The air­craft will then be re­turned to the lessor. 

In March, the air­line said the de­ci­sion to restart the ser­vice was based on cus­tomer feed­back and tar­get­ed the 300,000+ Ja­maicans liv­ing in Fort Laud­erdale and the sur­round­ing ar­eas. At the launch of the dai­ly ser­vice be­tween Mon­tego Bay and Flori­da, CAL CEO Garvin Med­era went one step fur­ther and promised the air­line was “in for the long haul”. Stake­hold­ers such as the Ja­maica Tourist Board (JTB), and the Ja­maica Ho­tel and Tourist As­so­ci­a­tion (JH­TA), ap­plaud­ed CAL’s moves at the time.  

How­ev­er, de­spite stake­hold­ers wel­com­ing the ad­di­tion­al ser­vice, both routes have been plagued by low load fac­tors. At­tempts to at­tract pas­sen­gers with pro­mo­tions such as dis­count­ed mileage re­demp­tions and re­duced fares were not enough to trans­late in­to high­er book­ings. Ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the US De­part­ment of Trans­porta­tion, on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions the air­line op­er­at­ed at less than 50% ca­pac­i­ty. And in at least one case, the air­line trans­port­ed less than 200 pas­sen­gers one way for an en­tire month, de­spite of­fer­ing 1,500+ seats one way. The flights al­so faced stiff com­pe­ti­tion from U.S.-based car­ri­ers Spir­it Air­lines and Jet­Blue, which both ser­vice the same routes. 

Caribbean Air­lines’ Chief Com­mer­cial Of­fi­cer, Mar­tin Ae­ber­li, is adamant how­ev­er that the air­line is not pulling out of the Ja­maican mar­ket com­plete­ly. “Caribbean Air­lines re­mains stead­fast in its mis­sion to con­nect peo­ple and com­mu­ni­ties across the re­gion and be­yond," Ae­ber­li said. "While ad­just­ments to our sched­ule are some­times nec­es­sary in re­sponse to evolv­ing mar­ket con­di­tions, our com­mit­ment to de­liv­er­ing a safe, re­li­able, and cus­tomer-fo­cused ser­vice re­mains un­changed. We will con­tin­ue to serve Ja­maica and the Di­as­po­ra through oth­er gate­ways with­in our net­work.”