Trinidad’s pilots vow to help rescue ailing carrier

The Trinidad & Tobago Pilots Association (TTPA) promised the island nation’s government to help restore BWIA, the local airline currently marred by grim financial woes. TTPA director Rory Lewes praised the efforts of president Patrick Manning’s administration to keep the carrier up in the air and extolled the loyalty of the company’s pilots.

Mr. Lewes called on the general public to throw its support behind BWIA in the coming summertime months to push the airline back in the black.

Press reports recently informed that 25 top execs from that airline agreed to accept a 15 percent wage cut in an effort to keep its aircraft flying.

A few days ago, Trinitarian authorities stressed their stance not to hand over any bailout package until the airline was in a position to cut operational costs.

The cabinet earmarked a $19.4 million fund to the company conditioned to severe spending cuts and other regulatory actions that were supposed to be taken.

Prior to that, BWIA’s higher-ups had already slashed salaries in 5 percent as far back as September 2002.

A couple of months ago, Caribbean leaders agreed to merge BWIA and LIAT together –the latter headquartered in Antigua & Barbuda- with a view to get rid of the severe financial problems these two carriers were going through.

The parts also saw eye to eye on the need to keep at least one airline covering the southern Caribbean routes and piece together a technical team in order to lay out and implement the appropriate structure for a unified air carrier and save the region’s aviation sector in the process.

The 9/11 terrorist attacks in NYC and Washington, coupled with the recent U.S. invasion of Iraq, wreaked havoc with air travel worldwide by pushing dramatic plunges in airfares, jobs and wages.

These international developments made regional airlines sing the financial and economic blues as trips plummeted around 10 to 15 percent. This situation also echoed in tourism, one of the major hard-currency income sources for these small Caribbean islands.