Brent Pin­heiro 

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt 

Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) is con­tin­u­ing to ex­pand its foot­print in the re­gion with its lat­est routes to the French Caribbean. Come De­cem­ber, the lo­cal car­ri­er will be­gin op­er­at­ing flights to Mar­tinique and Guade­loupe, both French over­seas de­part­ments in the East­ern Caribbean. Ser­vice to Fort-de-France (FDF), Mar­tinique be­gins on De­cem­ber 3rd, 2024 and ser­vice to Pointe-à-Pitre (PTP), Guade­loupe be­gins a few days lat­er on De­cem­ber 7th, 2024. CAL will fly four times week­ly to both is­lands – Tues­days, Fri­days, Sat­ur­days, and Sun­days to Mar­tinique and Sun­days, Wednes­days, Thurs­days and Sat­ur­days to Guade­loupe.  

Caribbean Air­lines CEO Garvin Med­era said in a state­ment, “For the first time in years, jour­neys that would tra­di­tion­al­ly take sev­er­al hours are now re­duced to just 90 min­utes, giv­ing trav­el­ers back their most valu­able re­source: time. Whether for busi­ness or leisure, we are con­fi­dent that this im­prove­ment in trav­el ef­fi­cien­cy will great­ly ben­e­fit our cus­tomers, and we are hap­py to make it eas­i­er for the Caribbean to ex­plore and con­nect with one an­oth­er.” 

Mar­tinique was first an­nounced as a des­ti­na­tion on Ju­ly 18th, 2023 at the ACI Air­port Day con­fer­ence held at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel. At the time, CAL CEO Garvin Med­era in­di­cat­ed the air­line would start flights to the French West In­dies in ei­ther the 4th quar­ter of 2023, or the 1st quar­ter of 2024. One year lat­er, the air­line says tick­ets are open for sale.  

With the new routes con­nect­ing Trinidad and Bar­ba­dos to the French Caribbean, Pres­i­dent of the Mar­tinique Tourism Au­thor­i­ty, Béné­dicte di Geron­i­mo, said the flights will “not on­ly strength­en our tourism in­dus­try but al­so con­tribute to build­ing stronger cul­tur­al and eco­nom­ic ties be­tween the south­ern is­lands and Mar­tinique. We look for­ward to wel­com­ing an in­creas­ing num­ber of vis­i­tors from the Caribbean, ea­ger to dis­cov­er the rich­ness of our cul­ture and the ex­cep­tion­al beau­ty of our des­ti­na­tion."

Travellers walk past a TSA PreCheck lane at the Miami International Airport. Photo: Brent Pinheiro

On Tues­day the air­line al­so an­nounced it has been ap­proved as a par­tic­i­pat­ing air­line in the TSA PreCheck® pro­gram. One of the U.S. Trans­porta­tion Se­cu­ri­ty Ad­min­is­tra­tion’s Trust­ed Trav­el­er Pro­grams, it al­lows el­i­gi­ble trav­ellers to use ded­i­cat­ed, ex­pe­dit­ed PreCheck lanes at par­tic­i­pat­ing US air­ports with­out the need to re­move shoes, lap­tops, 3-1-1 liq­uids, belts, or light jack­ets. Ac­cord­ing to the TSA web­site, PreCheck is avail­able when de­part­ing from a par­tic­i­pat­ing air­port or when con­nect­ing on do­mes­tic flights af­ter re­turn­ing to the U.S. from a for­eign air­port. 

TSA PreCheck is on­ly open to U.S. cit­i­zens, U.S. na­tion­als and law­ful per­ma­nent res­i­dents. The pro­gram starts at US$78 (de­pend­ing on the ser­vice provider) and is valid for 5 years. Over 90 air­lines par­tic­i­pate in the pro­gram.