CAL’s $1.7 billion loss on Air Jamaica

Asha Javeed

Con­sul­tant Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

Since Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) ac­quired Air Ja­maica (AJ) in 2011, the com­pa­ny has in­curred loss­es of over TT$1.7 bil­lion (US$255 mil­lion) in man­ag­ing that base.

Ac­cord­ing to doc­u­ments ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk for the years 2012-2025, unau­dit­ed ac­counts have a cu­mu­la­tive fig­ure of US$254,709,575.

While the AJ routes have made mon­ey for the air­line, ex­cept for 2020 dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and in 2025, its per­son­nel and ad­min­is­tra­tion costs have in­creased steadi­ly since 2020.

Ac­cord­ing to CAL sources, to date, there has been no fi­nan­cial con­tri­bu­tion by the Gov­ern­ment of Ja­maica (GOJ) to the air­line’s op­er­a­tion since the share­hold­ers’ agree­ment was signed on May 26, 2011, which gave it a 16 per cent eq­ui­ty in­ter­est in the com­pa­ny. That eq­ui­ty has since been di­lut­ed and now stands at 11.8 per cent. Fur­ther di­lu­tion, Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk was told, to un­der ten per cent would re­move Ja­maica’s right to a di­rec­tor on the board ac­cord­ing to the share­hold­ers’ agree­ment.

Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk un­der­stands that CAL, dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and more re­cent­ly, through the Min­istry of Fi­nance, made re­quests to the Gov­ern­ment of Ja­maica for fi­nan­cial sup­port for the air­line, but none has been forth­com­ing.

In No­vem­ber 2025, CAL dis­con­tin­ued flights be­tween Fort Laud­erdale, Flori­da and Mon­tego Bay and Kingston in Ja­maica due to poor per­for­mance.

Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk tried un­suc­cess­ful­ly to con­tact Ja­maica’s Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and the Pub­lic Ser­vice, Fay­val Williams, for com­ment on whether the Ja­maican Gov­ern­ment would of­fer fi­nan­cial sup­port for the air­line.

How­ev­er, an ex­am­i­na­tion of the share­hold­ers’ agree­ment signed by for­mer CAL chair­man George Nicholas III and for­mer min­is­ter of fi­nance Win­ston Dook­er­an put the onus of air­line ex­pens­es and costs on the T&T Gov­ern­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to Clause 1.6 for Ac­tions Re­quir­ing Share­hold­er Ap­proval, it notes that the com­pa­ny shall not, and should not per­mit any of its sub­sidiaries to take ac­tion with­out the ap­proval of the GOJ and in sub-clause (c), it says: make any re­quest for any manda­to­ry cap­i­tal con­tri­bu­tions or in­vest­ments from the GOJ.

As it stands now, there are two Ja­maican di­rec­tors on the CAL board. Last year, in June 2025, the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Blue­dot In­sights, Lar­ren Peart, was ap­point­ed to the board, and last month, on March 10, Williams wrote to CAL to rec­om­mend Kevin Firth be the GOJ’s ap­pointee on the board for the next three years.

Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk un­der­stands that Peart’s com­pa­ny, Blue­dot, which is a re­search and da­ta in­tel­li­gence com­pa­ny based in Ja­maica, was used by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) dur­ing the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tions.

When con­tact­ed on his ap­point­ment, Peart re­spond­ed, “As a share­hold­er, Ja­maica has a seat on the board.” How­ev­er, at the time of Peart’s ap­point­ment, the GOJ ap­pointee was Adam Moss, whose term has since ex­pired.

When Peart was asked fur­ther ques­tions on his ap­point­ment by the Ja­maican Gov­ern­ment, he, in turn, ques­tioned the ap­pointees to var­i­ous boards, as well as CAL, by the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion, where no avi­a­tion ex­perts were iden­ti­fied.

The ex­pens­es by CAL on the AJ arm of its op­er­a­tions come at a time when the air­line is seek­ing fur­ther fi­nan­cial sup­port from the Gov­ern­ment to counter the ris­ing cost of fu­el on its op­er­a­tional costs. Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk had ex­clu­sive­ly re­port­ed that sup­port would be in the form of an in­tro­duc­tion of a fu­el sur­charge on tick­ets, the re­moval of the sub­sidy on the air­bridge, an in­crease in the over­all cost of tick­ets, a fur­ther slash­ing of low­er rev­enue routes or even to write off its bil­lion-dol­lar debt.

Ac­cord­ing to the 2026 bud­get doc­u­ment “De­tails of Es­ti­mates of Re­cur­rent Ex­pen­di­ture,” dat­ed March 25, 2026, the Gov­ern­ment has al­lo­cat­ed $626.84 mil­lion for the prin­ci­pal re­pay­ment on the CAL’s lo­cal loans. That sum is triple the re­vised al­lo­ca­tion for prin­ci­pal re­pay­ment of $200.8 mil­lion in fis­cal 2025.

CAL sources told Guardian Me­dia that at the time, AJ’s ac­qui­si­tion was strate­gic—CAL want­ed its routes and it made po­lit­i­cal sense at the time.

In 2010, CAL had spent US$50 mil­lion to ac­quire AJ’s routes be­fore the share­hold­ers’ agree­ment was for­malised.

One year lat­er, the AJ op­er­a­tion record­ed an unau­dit­ed loss of US$38.1 mil­lion ($245.2 mil­lion) for 2011.

In 2012, just six years af­ter CAL was start­ed and one year af­ter it had ac­quired AJ, it faced what man­age­ment at the time had de­scribed as “op­er­a­tional risk” even as it op­er­at­ed with a fu­el hedge of US$50 per bar­rel from the State.

On May 4, 2012, for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an dis­closed to Par­lia­ment that the air­line made an unau­dit­ed loss of US$52.8 mil­lion ($339.5 mil­lion) for 2011, while sub­sidiary Air Ja­maica record­ed an unau­dit­ed loss of US$38.1 mil­lion ($245.2 mil­lion) for 2011.

For­mer chair­man Ra­bindra Moo­nan had said that CAL was not “re­al­is­ing any prof­its from its Air Ja­maica op­er­a­tions. On that side of the busi­ness, stiff com­pe­ti­tion from sev­er­al low-fare air­lines out of the US has caused CAL to re­vis­it its strate­gies and its cost struc­ture, which we are pro­gres­sive­ly work­ing on in an ef­fort to lev­el the play­ing field.”

At that time, some of CAL’s in­vest­ments (US$149 mil­lion) had to be liq­ui­dat­ed to ad­dress the cost­ly AJ op­er­a­tions.

For­mer di­rec­tor of the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty (CAA) Ramesh Lutch­me­di­al said that CAL nev­er ac­quired AJ.

“The Ja­maica Gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed to shut down AJ be­cause of IMF con­di­tion­al­i­ties. The Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment and the Ja­maican gov­ern­ment signed an agree­ment where­by CAL would be des­ig­nat­ed to op­er­ate cer­tain North Amer­i­can routes un­der the air ser­vice agree­ments Ja­maica had with the US and Cana­da.

“The routes cho­sen were those that were fre­quent­ly trav­elled by the Ja­maican North Amer­i­can di­as­po­ra,” he said.

Lutch­me­di­al said there was an agree­ment that the AJ brand was worth US$28.5 mil­lion, and in re­turn, GORTT agreed to give the Ja­maican Gov­ern­ment 16 per cent shares in CAL with one di­rec­tor on CAL’s board.

He not­ed that at the time, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar (who was PM at the time) said there would be one air­line with two brands.

At that time, CAL re­brand­ed sev­er­al Boe­ing 737-800 air­craft in the AJ liv­ery and the flight at­ten­dants wore AJ uni­forms and AJ crock­ery was used in the in­flight ser­vice.

“CAL hired hun­dreds of ex-AJ em­ploy­ees, in­clud­ing pi­lots, flight at­ten­dants, en­gi­neers, me­chan­ics and cus­tomer ser­vice staff. At one time, CAL’s VP Hu­man Re­sources was the ex-AJ VP Man­ag­er. T&T Civ­il Avi­a­tion Reg­u­la­tions were craft­ed in line with the re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas, where­by any Cari­com cit­i­zen can ob­tain a T&T pi­lot’s li­cence (CPL), get an Air Op­er­a­tor Cer­tifi­cate (AOC) or put an air­craft on the T&T reg­istry. This al­lowed most of the ex-AJ pi­lots to get a T&T CPL and em­ploy­ment with CAL.

“I strong­ly rec­om­mend­ed on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions to Dook­er­an (for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an) as Cor­po­ra­tion Sole that the share­hold­ers’ agree­ment must in­clude a clause that the Ja­maican Gov­ern­ment can­not grant an AOC to a Ja­maican air­line that will com­pete with CAL’s on the des­ig­nat­ed routes un­til the ex­pi­ra­tion of five years from the com­ing in­to ef­fect of the share­hold­er agree­ment. That rec­om­men­da­tion was guid­ed by my air­line ex­pe­ri­ence on how routes are de­vel­oped. My rec­om­men­da­tion was ig­nored,” he said.

He not­ed that with­in one year from the date of ex­e­cu­tion of the agree­ment, Ja­maica is­sued an AOC to an air­line named “Fly Ja­maica” which com­pet­ed di­rect­ly with CAL on some of the routes.

“The Ja­maican di­as­po­ra nev­er sup­port­ed CAL and in­stead chose to fly with oth­er air­lines. CAL stuck to the agree­ment and in the first two years, CAL lost over USD$200 mil­lion. Even­tu­al­ly, CAL had to drop the loss-mak­ing routes,” he not­ed.

“Al­so, dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and through­out CAL’s loss-mak­ing pe­ri­ods, de­spite the fact that Ja­maica is a share­hold­er and em­ploys hun­dreds of Ja­maican cit­i­zens, the Ja­maican Gov­ern­ment has not in­ject­ed a sin­gle cent in­to CAL.

The ef­fect of this means that the T&T tax­pay­ers were pay­ing the salaries of Ja­maicans, who in turn were pay­ing in­come tax­es to the Ja­maican Gov­ern­ment. What is most un­palat­able is that up to this day, Ja­maica has not amend­ed its civ­il avi­a­tion reg­u­la­tion to give ef­fect to the re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas the way T&T did,” he said.