Brent Pin­heiro 

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) has un­veiled plans to be more than just a trans­porta­tion provider and evolve in­to a lifestyle brand that com­bines trav­el with ‘cul­ture and ex­pe­ri­ences’.

At a cus­tomer ap­pre­ci­a­tion event on Wednes­day af­ter­noon en­ti­tled “Love and Loy­al­ty” the air­line of­fi­cial­ly launched its re­vamped mileage pro­gram, Caribbean Miles, which it says will make it eas­i­er for trav­ellers to earn and re­deem miles.

CAL has changed the way miles are earned from be­ing dis­tance-based to rev­enue-based - a move that has gained pop­u­lar­i­ty in the avi­a­tion in­dus­try over the past few years.

Miles are now cal­cu­lat­ed based on the base fare spent in US dol­lars and then mul­ti­plied de­pend­ing on the fly­er’s tier sta­tus in the pro­gram.

Over 200,000 mem­bers are cur­rent­ly en­rolled in the pro­gram.

CAL’s CEO Garvin Med­era al­so an­nounced sev­er­al oth­er ini­tia­tives for 2025.

These in­clude of­fer­ing Caribbean Air­lines gift cards, ex­pand­ing car­go and Jet­pak couri­er ser­vices to in­clude door-to-door de­liv­ery in Guyana and Ja­maica, and ex­pand­ing the air­line’s Caribbean Shop plat­form to in­clude pieces from lo­cal de­sign­ers.

Caribbean Air­lines car­ried over 2 mil­lion pas­sen­gers in 2024, up 6% com­pared to 2023.

It al­so launched sev­er­al new routes in­clud­ing Puer­to Ri­co, Tor­to­la, and Mar­tinique.

The lo­cal car­ri­er has plans to add even more des­ti­na­tions to its route net­work this year as part of its growth strat­e­gy.

But it will need more planes to do so and CAL chair­man S. Ron­nie Mo­hammed said fleet ex­pan­sion to in­clude a third air­craft type is still more than a year out.

He said, “All things be­ing equal and con­sid­er­ing the nu­ances of the sup­ply chain, with­in the next 12 to 18 months we will be ex­pand­ing the fleet to in­clude re­gion­al jets, which would fur­ther bol­ster our reach through­out the re­gion and be­yond.”

The de­ci­sion to add Em­braer E175 jets to CAL’s fleet was first an­nounced in 2023. The air­line is al­so await­ing three more Boe­ing 737-8 air­craft, how­ev­er, those are al­so be­ing ham­pered by sup­ply chain is­sues on the man­u­fac­tur­er’s end.