CAL leases plane for Tobago route

Dionne Ligoure, the company’s Communications manager said the “wet lease” arrangement is nothing new to the airline industry and this lease was being done at no cost to taxpayers. She, however, did not give any particulars about the lease.

The first ATR - 9Y-TTA is in the hangar after its ninth engine problem.

The ATR company has sent engineers to see if the problems which affect the engine can be found. That particular aircraft is five years old, having arrived at Piarco International in November 2011.

According to new chairman, Shameez Ronnie Mohammed, the company after discussions with its team of lawyers is now looking at its legal options in the matter. He told this to a recent Joint Select Committee (JSC) on State Enterprises, but no further details were available.

The company is going that route because very regularly the domestic service is either delayed or cancelled because of aircraft repairs. Whenever this occurs CAL is forced to press its retuning jets into service to move passengers between Trinidad and Tobago. Over the recently concluded weekends of Christmas and New Year’s dozens of jet flights were used to transport passengers.

This heavy use of the company’s jets on the domestic service has brought the cost factor to the forefront.

Chairman Mohammed told the JSC that it was time to look at the heavily subsidised fares on the Tobago service, the only route on CAL’s system that is subsidised. Government gives $100 for every $300 ticket sold on the airbridge, when the fare itself should be in the vicinity of $700- $800.

The chairman told the JSC they had sent some proposals to the government, which included the fare structure and some ancillary charges and were awaiting an answer from the authorities. Some of these recommendations include a charge for excess baggage; flight date changes and a “no show” charge.

He said that while the airline was committed “to provide the support and the mandate that we have been charged with in providing that service”, the airline was exploring measures that would increase its revenue stream without interfering with the current $300 fare.

While chairman Mohammed insists that the domestic route remains unprofitable for the company, statistics show that the airline is still losing money on other routes.

However, he said the POS – JFK route is showing signs of a turnaround and that he expects a profit by 2018.

Meanwhile arrangements are still being made for the repatriation of more than $50 million owed the airline by Venezuela.

“We do believe in 2018 we should be able to break even. Our numbers indicate that 2016 was better than 2015. Our numbers suggest that 2017 would be better than 2016 and therefore we remain hopeful that by 2018 CAL perhaps would no longer be a burden on the taxpayer,” he said.

Although Mohammed told the JSC he preferred not to detail CAL’s financial performance for 2016 since the airline’s accounts for that period have not been audited, it must be noted that figures for several years preceding have not been made public