Caribbean Air­lines says near­ly 70% of its op­er­at­ing costs are in for­eign cur­ren­cy—an eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ty it says must guide how it man­ages tick­et sales and pay­ment op­tions.

The air­line de­fend­ed its broad­er pric­ing struc­ture, say­ing ex­pens­es such as air­craft leas­es, fu­el, tax­es, and main­te­nance are over­whelm­ing­ly billed in for­eign cur­ren­cy. “This eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ty ne­ces­si­tates a bal­anced ap­proach to en­sure fi­nan­cial sus­tain­abil­i­ty and op­er­a­tional vi­a­bil­i­ty,” the state­ment said.

The air­line was re­spond­ing to com­ments by econ­o­mist Dr Mar­lene Attzs, who ar­gued that Trin­bag­o­ni­ans should be al­lowed to book CAL flights on­line in Trinidad and To­ba­go dol­lars (TTD) us­ing lo­cal deb­it cards.

Attzs said the cur­rent sys­tem, which of­ten re­quires US dol­lars even for do­mes­tic or re­gion­al book­ings, places un­due pres­sure on al­ready lim­it­ed for­eign ex­change re­serves and locks out trav­ellers with­out ac­cess to US-dol­lar cred­it cards.

In a state­ment, the State-owned car­ri­er ac­knowl­edged the on­go­ing dis­course and said it al­ready ac­cepts TTD pay­ments at all its phys­i­cal tick­et of­fices in Pi­ar­co, Port of Spain, San Fer­nan­do, To­ba­go, and through lo­cal trav­el agents. Cus­tomers can al­so use the air­line’s mo­bile app to pay in TTD for do­mes­tic trav­el be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go.

CAL al­so point­ed to its Caribbean Lay­away plan, an in­ter­est-free op­tion that al­lows cus­tomers to pay in in­stal­ments us­ing TTD.