Caribbean Airlines confirms Blue Waters removed from flights

State-owned Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) has con­firmed that Blue Wa­ters bot­tled wa­ter is no longer be­ing served on its flights, days af­ter the air­line qui­et­ly switched sup­pli­ers fol­low­ing the de­ten­tion of the com­pa­ny’s prin­ci­pal own­ers un­der Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs).

In a me­dia re­lease to­day, CAL con­firmed that it had changed its bot­tled wa­ter sup­pli­er for its in-flight ser­vice.

The air­line did not iden­ti­fy ei­ther the for­mer or new sup­pli­er but said it con­duct­ed the pro­cure­ment process in ac­cor­dance with the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion, en­sur­ing a fair and trans­par­ent process.

CAL said the change forms part of its on­go­ing trans­for­ma­tion pro­gramme, which is fo­cused on im­prov­ing op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy and sup­port­ing the air­line’s long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

The con­fir­ma­tion fol­lows a Guardian Me­dia re­port that the air­line had stopped serv­ing Blue Wa­ters on its flights last Wednes­day af­ter more than 15 years and re­placed it with Dasani, which is pro­duced lo­cal­ly by Caribbean Bot­tlers Trinidad & To­ba­go Ltd, a sub­sidiary of the Co­ca-Co­la Com­pa­ny.

Sources told Guardian Me­dia the de­ci­sion cre­at­ed op­er­a­tional chal­lenges in the im­me­di­ate af­ter­math of the switch be­cause Blue Wa­ters is sup­plied across the air­line’s net­work.

“Crews had to re­move the la­bels of the wa­ter be­fore they served. And some crews had to pour wa­ter in­to cups for cus­tomers,” one source said.

Guardian Me­dia was al­so told that the de­ci­sion to change sup­pli­ers came from CAL’s board.

Nei­ther board chair­man Rey­na Kow­lessar nor oth­er com­pa­ny of­fi­cials re­spond­ed to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia on what prompt­ed the im­me­di­ate change.

Blue Wa­ters has sup­plied bot­tled wa­ter to the air­line for years, with pay­ment records ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia show­ing CAL spent about $460,000 on bot­tled wa­ter in 2024, in­clud­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly $264,000 on in­voic­es from Blue Wa­ters.

The switch comes as Blue Wa­ters own­ers Do­minic Hadeed and his wife, Genevieve Hadeed, re­main in cus­tody un­der PDOs along­side their rel­a­tive, Star Sab­ga. The three are be­ing de­tained as law en­force­ment in­ves­ti­gates an al­leged con­spir­a­cy to mur­der Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and oth­er se­nior mem­bers of her Cab­i­net. No crim­i­nal charges have been laid against them.

De­spite the change in sup­pli­ers, Caribbean Air­lines said cus­tomers can con­tin­ue to ex­pect the same high stan­dard of on-board ser­vice as it re­mains com­mit­ted to de­liv­er­ing a safe, re­li­able and en­joy­able trav­el ex­pe­ri­ence.