CAL to allow domestic flight payments in T&T dollars

Caribbean Air­lines an­nounced yes­ter­day that cus­tomers will soon be able to pay for do­mes­tic flights in Trinidad and To­ba­go dol­lars across all of its dig­i­tal plat­forms, more than a year af­ter calls for greater use of lo­cal cur­ren­cy in­stead of USD.

In a fly­er post­ed on its so­cial me­dia plat­forms, the air­line said trav­ellers will be able to book and pay for do­mes­tic flights in T&T dol­lars through its web­site, mo­bile app, reser­va­tions call cen­tre and tick­et of­fices.

The air­line said cus­tomers will be able to use deb­it and cred­it cards to make se­cure pay­ments and book do­mes­tic trav­el from any­where in the world.

The move ex­pands ex­ist­ing pay­ment op­tions for do­mes­tic trav­el and comes af­ter econ­o­mist Dr Mar­lene Attzs last year urged the ma­jor­i­ty state-owned car­ri­er to re­con­sid­er its re­liance on US dol­lar pay­ments for on­line trans­ac­tions.

At the time, Attzs ar­gued that na­tion­als should have the op­tion of pur­chas­ing air­line tick­ets on­line in T&T dol­lars us­ing lo­cal­ly is­sued cards, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the coun­try's for­eign ex­change con­straints.

She main­tained that such a sys­tem would im­prove ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty for stu­dents, re­tirees, small busi­ness own­ers and low­er-in­come earn­ers who may strug­gle to ac­cess US cur­ren­cy.

Caribbean Air­lines had de­fend­ed its for­eign cur­ren­cy-based pay­ment mod­el, say­ing al­most 70 per cent of its ex­pens­es, in­clud­ing air­craft leas­es, fu­el, tax­es and main­te­nance, are billed in for­eign cur­ren­cy.

The air­line al­so not­ed that it al­ready ac­cept­ed T&T dol­lar pay­ments at tick­et of­fices and through lo­cal trav­el agents, while of­fer­ing do­mes­tic T&T dol­lar pay­ment op­tions on its mo­bile ap­pli­ca­tion and through its Caribbean Lay­away plan.

How­ev­er, Attzs ar­gued that in-per­son pay­ment op­tions did not ful­ly ad­dress the is­sue, say­ing many peo­ple face chal­lenges ac­cess­ing phys­i­cal lo­ca­tions and that dig­i­tal T&T dol­lar pay­ments would pro­vide a more in­clu­sive so­lu­tion.

Caribbean Air­lines is joint­ly owned by the Gov­ern­ments of Trinidad and To­ba­go and Ja­maica, with Trinidad and To­ba­go hold­ing an 88.06 per cent stake.