(Trinidad Guardian) Caribbean Airlines Ltd is saddled with a US$270,000 monthly bill for breaking its lease on two 767 jets that are now flying for Air Canada.
The issue was brought to the fore as company officials appeared before yesterday’s Joint Select Committee meeting in Parliament.
“We are still incurring payments on the 767s and that goes until August 2017. The leases were due to expire in 2017. We returned the aircraft but given that we were returning, we had to renegotiate with lessors (a person who leases property),” CAL chief executive officer Captain Jagmohan Singh said, as he noted US$135, 000 was due for each carrier.
The 767s, which once served the retired London route for CAL, are now used by Air Canada.
The committee also heard that CAL experiences some US$40,000 in credit card fraud per month. This activity occurred on some of the most popular routes, including Port-of-Spain to New York, Guyana to North America, Kingston to New York and out of Caracas, where fraudsters used other people’s information to make bookings on CAL’s website.
However, Senior Manager Financial and Revenue Accounting, Adrian Agarrat, said systems were being put in place to deal with this, as it was of serious concern to the industry. He said in 2013 it was discovered there was a US$20 million accounting error which was since rectified by external auditors.
Regarding the submission of documents, CAL was warned by Senator David Small that it must comply with the committee’s request.
At the previous hearing, the committee requested a document which was not publicly specified, but had still not received it up to yesterday. In giving an explanation, however, CAL vice chairman Michael Quamina expressed concern in submitting the document, saying it was confidential.
But Small said it was not up to the management to determine what documents ought to submitted, saying full compliance was expected by the committee.
Quamina then assured that they would submit the document within 48 hours
On the request for documents regarding management of the tender process and evaluation documents for purchasing aircraft, Small said this was also not done.
Tender and evaluation documents for the 2011 purchase of five ATR aircraft were still outstanding. The ATRs belong to a $200 million fleet from which regional aviation bodies reported five engine fire warnings from December 2015 to December 2016. However, the Civil Aviation Authority of T&T does not publish these incidents.
Colville Carrington, VP Maintenance and Engineering, also assured this would be done.
It was also revealed that according to a recent survey conducted by the company, some 66 per cent of employees were dissatisfied with management and in particular the direction in which the company was heading.
