Trinidad Express – Caribbean Airlines (CAL) pilots are wrong, wrong, wrong! There is nothing any pilot or anyone affiliated with TTALPA (Trinidad and Tobago Airline Pilots Association) can say to convince me, or any right-thinking T&T citizen, that Sunday’s sick-out, which shut down the airline for 24 hours and disrupted the lives thousands of passengers, was anything other than selfish, outrageous and illegal.
The pilots’ actions were obviously premeditated (scores of pilots don’t all report sick three hours before flight time by chance) and orchestrated to have maximum disruptive effect—it was Great Race weekend in Tobago when all airbridge flights were fully booked; mid-August, CAL’s busiest period, with students returning to school abroad, and hundreds of Trinis coming back home from vacation. Their actions were heartless, vindictive and illegal.
Pilots are very well paid. Their salaries range from $25,000 a month for junior pilots to $100,000 for veterans. Not saying they don’t have a right to negotiate for more money but shutting down the company cannot be an option. There is a process for negotiations—negotiate. The pilots’ actions put untold pressure on CAL’s lowest paid customer-facing staff who, we can be sure, got more cuss than one can imagine.
And I agree with Minister Stuart Young, the pilots believe they are “entitled”. And Opposition MP Roodal Moonilal is trying to politicise and justify behaviour that was patently illegal.
My advice to you: hush! Interestingly, all the comments and online posts from the “disgruntled” pilots are anonymous.
If you’re bold enough to sick out and leave people stranded all over the place, and set up your colleagues for cuss, why are you not bold enough to stand up and speak out publicly? Why, because you know you’re wrong, wrong, wrong.
The national airline has never made a profit; it survives on a Government subsidy, it is highly indebted, staff had to be furloughed during Covid, and the pandemic caused CAL to lay off staff.
The airline is now trying to recover. It has launched a marketing campaign to attract more of the diaspora to use CAL to “Come Home”.The pilots want that money. Allyuh too wicked and bad.
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Once again, when I say, when Prime Minister Browne called out the LIAT Pilots, ALL the political prostitutes like the ABWU were lambasting him for that. But when the Minister in Trinidad said the same thing about the Trinidadian pilots, and the fact the court ruled their actions illegal, no one came out and said anything. Why? because it wasn’t Gaston Browne. Here again an opinion that claims how dead wrong the pilots are. LIAT Pilots are part of the demise of LIAT, and they need to take responsibility for that. And if they think they can go with the same attitude into LIAT 2020 they are wrong, because they will not be flying for LIAT 2020.
Agreed
Don’t know who wrong but intercaribbean airways needs to consolidate its fleet and try to either fold or hold. Those planes that are working every other day and have lead to delay after delay need to understand that the region is not in the dark Ages
Caribbean people should boycott intercaribbean airways . If Noone flies then the airline would do better .
An airline is a highly capitalise, labour intensive and very regulated. No investor in Barbados Jamaica or Trinidad will risk their precious capital.
The public just chat ignorance. The governments all want liat back but too broke to even think of investing and reinvesting. Better to focus and fix their socio-economic issues. To date no government have diversified from tourism in the Eastern Caribbean. InterCaribbean does have it fair share of problems. None of the governments have contributed any substantial money towards the airline. The airline has grown year over year and has more regional connectivity than CAL or LIAT combined. Trinidad has prevented fair competition and to date has prevent interCaribbean from operating. We out of covid and normalcy has return and so does critics who don’t have a broad knowledge of airline management but they are experts because hold a Bsc and PhD.
$25,000 per month for a first officer? That blows the u.s pay rates for aircrews completely out of the water!
Are you sure it isn’t $25-100K per year?
There is so much inequality in pay rate by profession. An MD or a certified mechanic or an accountant or a lawyer have all studied for the same amount of years
So why should one be paid more than the other. Even gardeners are topping to ladder of pay rate lately. $200 for a two hours job to cut your grass. If lucky and he has three jobs a day he will earn $600 a day or $3000 in a week. You go to university and go find a job and would be lucky to earn that in a month
The article is quoting TT dollars.
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