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Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has is­sued an ul­ti­ma­tum to the man­age­ment of lo­cal car­ri­er Caribbean Air­lines (CAL): ‘sort out the mess’ in two years or find a new job. Speak­ing at the UNC's Mon­day Night Re­port in Cou­va, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­cused man­age­ment of fail­ing to do its job, pay­ing $60 mil­lion to EY and Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers (PwC) for au­dits de­spite a large in­ter­nal fi­nan­cial team, fail­ing to sub­mit au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments, and op­er­at­ing un­prof­itable routes.

Since 2023, Caribbean Air­lines has added sev­er­al new des­ti­na­tions to its route map, in­clud­ing Puer­to Ri­co, Mar­tinique, Guade­loupe, and Tor­to­la, as part of its 2023-2027 strate­gic plan - ap­proved by the then PNM gov­ern­ment. The air­line trans­port­ed over two mil­lion pas­sen­gers in both 2023 and 2024, but Per­sad-Bisses­sar in­sists that de­spite the num­bers, none of the routes are prof­itable. Al­though some routes have main­tained high pas­sen­ger loads, oth­ers have strug­gled. For ex­am­ple, a new Ja­maica ser­vice op­er­at­ing be­tween Kingston/Mon­tego Bay and Fort Laud­erdale has rou­tine­ly seen poor load fac­tors. Ac­cord­ing to the U.S. De­part­ment of Trans­porta­tion’s Bu­reau of Trans­porta­tion Sta­tis­tics, some months have seen the air­line trans­port on­ly 160 pas­sen­gers one way de­spite of­fer­ing 1,600 seats on a Boe­ing 737-800.

What is the fi­nan­cial state of Caribbean Air­lines?