BRENT PIN­HEIRO

Pro­duc­er

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

Just over sev­en years af­ter it was first in­tro­duced, Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) has end­ed its “Caribbean Café” buy-on-board ser­vice as part of a broad­er ef­fort to slash op­er­at­ing costs.

In an in­ter­nal email to staff, the air­line an­nounced that the changes will take ef­fect on Jan­u­ary 1.

Caribbean Café of­fered pas­sen­gers trav­el­ing on se­lect routes the op­tion to pur­chase brand­ed mer­chan­dise and lo­cal­ly made prod­ucts from Trinidad and To­ba­go and Ja­maica while in-flight. It was launched in 2018 to im­prove cus­tomer ser­vice. Now, as the air­line shifts in­to a cost-cut­ting phase, the ser­vice has been dis­con­tin­ued un­til fur­ther no­tice. Com­pli­men­ta­ry meals/snacks will still be served on se­lect routes.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the air­line will al­so close its mer­chan­dise store ‘D’ Caribbean Shop’, on Jan­u­ary 1. How­ev­er, it will con­tin­ue to sell brand­ed mer­chan­dise and oth­er items on­line and at its du­ty-free store at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al.

In a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia, the air­line said it “re­mains fo­cused on con­tin­u­ous­ly re­view­ing and re­fin­ing its prod­uct of­fer­ings to sup­port an en­hanced cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence”, adding that the on­board ex­pe­ri­ence would not be im­pact­ed by these changes.

This move is part of Caribbean Air­lines' lat­est ef­forts to cut costs, even though it re­duces an­cil­lary rev­enue.

On De­cem­ber 4, the air­line al­so an­nounced it was dis­con­tin­u­ing ser­vices to the British Vir­gin Is­lands and Puer­to Ri­co and plans to shift its Bar­ba­dos hub op­er­a­tions back to Trinidad.