Caribbean Airlines to resume Venezuela flights

Brent Pin­heiro

Re­porter

brent.pin­[email protected]

One year af­ter Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed flights be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and Venezuela, the air­line is prepar­ing to re­sume ser­vice to the South Amer­i­can na­tion.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia via What­sApp, CAL chair­man Rey­na Kow­lessar said the air­line has “pro­posed to recom­mence its com­mer­cial op­er­a­tion” to Simón Bolí­var In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in Cara­cas this month.

She added: “The air­line is in its fi­nal stages of op­er­a­tional plan­ning and will an­nounce its restart of op­er­a­tions short­ly.”

On Sep­tem­ber 4, 2025, Caribbean Air­lines sus­pend­ed its week­ly ser­vice to Cara­cas but did not pub­licly dis­close a rea­son for the move. How­ev­er, an in­ter­nal memo to pi­lots and cab­in crew, seen by Guardian Me­dia, stat­ed that the air­line had con­duct­ed a “thor­ough risk as­sess­ment” of con­di­tions in Venezuela in keep­ing with its op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures.

The memo said the air­line took a “proac­tive com­mer­cial de­ci­sion to re­duce any risk to the safe­ty and well-be­ing of its pas­sen­gers and crew.”

By De­cem­ber 2025, sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al and re­gion­al car­ri­ers had al­so sus­pend­ed ser­vices to Venezuela af­ter the Unit­ed States Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion (FAA) is­sued a No­tice to Air­men (NO­TAM) ad­vis­ing air­lines to “ex­er­cise ex­treme cau­tion” be­cause of de­te­ri­o­rat­ing se­cu­ri­ty con­di­tions, in­creased mil­i­tary ac­tiv­i­ty and in­ter­fer­ence with Glob­al Nav­i­ga­tion Satel­lite Sys­tem (GNSS) sig­nals.

Since then, most air­lines have re­sumed op­er­a­tions to Venezuela, in­clud­ing Amer­i­can Air­lines, which re­turned to the mar­ket af­ter last op­er­at­ing com­mer­cial flights to the coun­try in 2019.