CAL disrespectful to domestic customers

Minority Assemblyman Farley Augustine is accusing Caribbean Airlines of being disrespectful towards its domestic customers with what he said was a practice of perennial poor service.

Augustine reported that last weekend, persons who were at the airport on Saturday were told that there was just one plane working on that day. He said this caused a rollover of, and resulting chaos for travellers, into Sunday.

“This is an opportunity for me to call on Caribbean Airlines to fix whatever issues is going on there for them,” he said, also calling on CAL to apologise to customers on the airbridge. Folks would have gone to the airport with legitimate expectations and with legitimate bookings, only to be met with cancellations. In the same way Caribbean Airlines wishes to charge us $50 extra when we don’t have manners enough to plan properly, then they too must have good manners to indicate to the public when they are having these challenges.

“I think Caribbean Airlines has absolutely no manners whatsoever …they should have publicly apologised to Trinbagonians about the fact that folks would show up to the airport and there would just be one plane flying…Caribbean Airlines needs to apologise to the public and they need to say something to the public,” insisted Augustine.

“Something genuinely wrong could have happened (for CAL to only have one plane in service) but if that was the case we need to get to a point where Caribbean Airlines operates with a kind of efficiency and a kind of good manners and a kind of good communication with the public, whereby the public would be aware of these challenges beforehand,” he said.

Attempts to contact Dionne Ligoure, CAL's head of Corporate Communications, for a comment on Tuesday, were unsuccessful.