Brent Pin­heiro

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

Ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly, Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) will tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend flights be­tween Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Cara­cas, Venezuela.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, the air­line said its BW300/301 ser­vices, set to op­er­ate on Sep­tem­ber 6, 13, 20, and 27, were sus­pend­ed. Pas­sen­gers hold­ing con­firmed tick­ets are be­ing ad­vised to reach out to the air­line for re­book­ing/re­fund op­tions.

Caribbean Air­lines re­sumed fly­ing to Cara­cas on May 13th, 2023, sev­er­al years af­ter the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic shut­tered air­line routes across the world.

The air­line has not pub­licly giv­en a rea­son for the sus­pen­sion. How­ev­er, in an in­ter­nal memo to pi­lots and cab­in crew, which seen by Guardian Me­dia, the air­line said it has been fol­low­ing a “thor­ough risk as­sess­ment” of the cur­rent con­di­tions in Venezuela un­der its op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dure. As such, it said it is tak­ing a “proac­tive com­mer­cial de­ci­sion to re­duce any risk to the safe­ty and well-be­ing of its pas­sen­gers and crew.”

On Tues­day, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump re­vealed the mil­i­tary had killed 11 sus­pect­ed Tren de Aragua drug run­ners off the Venezue­lan coast­line. While US of­fi­cials have not ex­plained how the mil­i­tary de­ter­mined the de­ceased were Tren de Aragua mem­bers or that they were car­ry­ing a ship­ment of drugs, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has come out in sup­port of the US’ ac­tions, call­ing on them to “kill them all vi­o­lent­ly.”