Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

For­mer UNC min­is­ter of trade and in­dus­try, Vas­ant Bharath, says the on­go­ing im­passe be­tween Caribbean Air­lines and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pi­lots’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTAL­PA) has not au­gured well for the air­line’s im­age and rep­u­ta­tion.

As he weighed in on the mat­ter yes­ter­day, Bharath told Guardian Me­dia that the fall­out from last week­end’s flight can­cel­la­tions, af­ter 93 pi­lots called in sick over the week­end, can have a last­ing im­pact on the thou­sands of af­fect­ed pas­sen­gers.

“The ac­tions that were tak­en, whether jus­ti­fied or not, does have a neg­a­tive im­pact on tourists com­ing to Trinidad and To­ba­go and peo­ple from the di­as­po­ra who may have come here for hol­i­days and that leaves a sour taste in peo­ple’s mouths. How­ev­er good a hol­i­day they would have had, it clear­ly would have been sul­lied and soured.”

CAL has re­vealed that over 60 flights were af­fect­ed last week­end and that it lost over $15 mil­lion. It al­so had to put on six re­cov­ery flights to take care of the back­log of in­ter­na­tion­al pas­sen­gers who were left strand­ed here due to the flight can­cel­la­tions.

Gov­ern­ment has since in­di­cat­ed that the Min­is­ter of labour will step in as a me­di­a­tor in the wage ne­go­ti­a­tion process. How­ev­er, Min­is­ter Stephen Mc Clashie has al­ready in­di­cat­ed that the pi­lots’ ten per cent wage hike ask is un­rea­son­able giv­en CAL’s cur­rent fi­nan­cial state.

Bharath al­so ques­tioned the time­li­ness of what he de­scribed as an in­dus­tri­al ac­tion by the pi­lots, al­though the pi­lots’ union main­tained it did not con­done or or­gan­ise any such ac­tion.

“I’m a lit­tle shocked that the pi­lots took this ac­tion con­sid­er­ing the ne­go­ti­a­tions have on­ly been go­ing on, from what I un­der­stand, since Au­gust 3. It has been just less than a month and they have tak­en ac­tion that was ob­vi­ous­ly cal­cu­lat­ed to dis­rupt the air­line but they did not take in­to ac­count or un­der­stand the longer-term reper­cus­sion, es­pe­cial­ly to those who would have suf­fered as a di­rect re­sult of the ac­tion.”

While Bharath called for an analy­sis in­to Gov­ern­ment’s sub­sidy of the air­bridge, for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Karen Nunez-Tesheira al­so raised red flags of her own with the air­line’s op­er­a­tions.

“A sub­sidy that peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go are pay­ing, even though it is done through the Gov­ern­ment, the per­sons who are go­ing to be the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of that will just be the Trinidad and To­ba­go air­bridge, which was what the in­ten­tion was, as far as I un­der­stand. But now you’re tak­ing that same air­line with new air­craft, no ad­di­tion­al staffing and now ex­pand­ed to Grena­da, St Vin­cent and An­tigua and even Do­mini­ca and who is pay­ing for that sub­sidy, is it the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Nunez-Tesheira main­tained that the sit­u­a­tion which un­fold­ed at the air­line was re­gret­table and is now call­ing for a da­ta study be con­duct­ed to bridge any fu­ture dis­con­nect that may arise.