Raphael John-Lall

UNC MP for Oropouche East Dr Roodal Mooni­lal is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to re­ject the “mad­cap plan” by tax­pay­er-fund­ed Caribbean Air­lines Ltd (CAL) to pur­chase three new air­craft af­ter los­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars over the years.

On this mat­ter, he said it is clear that CAL was try­ing to “fly un­der the radar of ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy.”

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, Mooni­lal said the plan by CAL to buy three ad­di­tion­al Max 8 air­craft was in progress while the in­ter­na­tion­al in­dus­try is still cut­ting costs to re­cov­er from huge fi­nan­cial loss­es dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Guardian Me­dia called and sent a What­sApp mes­sage to CAL’s Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Man­ag­er Dionne Ligoure for CAL’s po­si­tion on the state­ment but there was no re­sponse up to late yes­ter­day.

“T&T’s tax­pay­ers propped up CAL with more than $300 mil­lion dur­ing that afore­men­tioned chal­leng­ing time, and the air­line still has not be­come prof­itable,” Mooni­lal said.

“Sure­ly, the air­line’s im­me­di­ate fo­cus should be to max­imise the use of its cur­rent fleet and to fi­nan­cial­ly re­cov­er from its years of dev­as­tat­ing loss­es. CAL even ad­mit­ted that vis­i­tor trav­el for Car­ni­val in the year 2023 was sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er than that of 2022. The in­ter­na­tion­al in­dus­try is still con­sol­i­dat­ing and re­view­ing and sta­bil­is­ing all charges along the val­ue chain, in­clud­ing car­go costs.”

He urged the Gov­ern­ment to re­ject CAL’s strate­gic plan and in­struct the com­pa­ny to be­come fi­nan­cial­ly sol­vent in the com­pet­i­tive avi­a­tion in­dus­try and re­pay tax­pay­ers for their ma­jor fi­nan­cial sup­port.

Mooni­lal al­so re­called that on Ju­ly 30, 2021, CAL re­trenched 79 pi­lots and as­cribed blame to the ef­fects of the pan­dem­ic.

“Caribbean Air­lines be­gan to se­cret­ly re­call re­trenched pi­lots with­in nine months of re­trench­ment. This de­ci­sion caused an ex­treme­ly rois­ter­ing sit­u­a­tion with in­creased de­mand for flights and a lack of pi­lots. Caribbean Air­lines has cre­at­ed a sched­ule and a chaot­ic sit­u­a­tion where pi­lots are ex­pect­ed to work on their off days and va­ca­tion to try to fa­cil­i­tate the flights with a lack of crew,” he said.

“Pi­lots now reg­u­lar­ly op­er­ate red-eye flights out­side the cir­ca­di­an clock and are ex­pect­ed to do so with min­i­mal rest. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the col­lec­tive agree­ment for pi­lots ex­pired since 2015 and pi­lots have not had a new agree­ment for over sev­en years.”

He asked who was go­ing to op­er­ate those new air­craft when there was a pi­lot short­age at CAL and added that pi­lots were al­ready com­plain­ing of fa­tigue and se­vere con­di­tions at work.

Mooni­lal rec­om­mend­ed that there should be a com­pre­hen­sive as­sess­ment of CAL’s rev­enue, ex­pen­di­ture, and prof­it analy­sis be­fore com­mit­ting hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in debt to the air­line and the na­tion.

“CAL can emerge as a ‘mi­ni Petrotrin’ un­der a new Mal­com Jones if we do not stop and take stock,” he added.