TBT (Throwback Thursday) in Aviation History: Caribbean Star/Caribbean Sun

With British West Indies Airways removing its island hopping service in the 1990s, new carriers started to pop up. One of these new carriers was the Antigua and Barbuda based Caribbean Star Airlines. The carrier started operations in the eastern portion of the Caribbean in June 2000 with the use of Bombardier Dash 8 turboprops.

The two carriers operated similar fleets with the Bombardier Dash 8s, and despite being operated individually, the airlines would allow for passengers to transfer carriers without rebooking. The main goal of creating Caribbean Sun was to increase the presence of Caribbean Star, but the new carrier took on a life of its own and was instead helping itself expand.

Despite the slow start, Caribbean Star began expanding in the mid-2000s. The airline added longer distance routes to Trinidad and Tobago and started to replace the fleet of older Bombardier Dash 8-100s with the newer Bombardier Dash 8-300s. The older Bombardier Dash 8-100s were transferred to Caribbean Sun to allow the San Juan carrier to expand operations and add service to Ft. Lauderdale.

While success came in the mid-2000s, the two individual carriers started to see the struggles of operating an all-Caribbean island hopping service. Expansion stalled, and routes like San Juan-Santo Domingo were dropped due to lack of year-round demand.

Caribbean Sun became the first of two partner carriers to falter. The airline announced that it would shut down operations on January 31, 2007 due to lack of demand in the San Juan market. Caribbean Sun was not helped by the lack of alliances and fierce competition from American Airlines, who operated an island hopping hub in San Juan.

The parent company also said that they did not need Caribbean Sun anymore since Caribbean Star had been upgraded by the FAA and could now fly to the US. With only one carrier left, the company chose to focus on expanding Caribbean Star. However, this action was short lived. A few months after the shutdown of Caribbean Sun, competitor LIAT offered to merge with Caribbean Star Airlines to create a larger regional island-hopping airline.

While the deal was met with promise, the governments that had invested in Caribbean Star were thrilled at the idea and voted to remove their stake in Caribbean Star to allow for LIAT to make their deal a complete takeover and move their investments over to LIAT.

The deal was made successful and LIAT became the surviving name in the deal. Caribbean Star’s five Bombardier Dash 8-300s were moved into LIAT’s fleet, but the merged carrier would return six others due to lack of need. The hub in Antigua and Barbuda was kept and LIAT adjusted their new larger route map. With Caribbean Star gone, the original investors in the Caribbean Star brand attempted to restart Caribbean Sun to continue operations. However, high start-up costs proved to be difficult, and instead, the carrier was sold to a Miami investor.

Most of the Bombardier Dash 8-300s have moved on to new homes after their stint at LIAT. The Caribbean Star name disappeared completely during the merger with LIAT, with the post-merger “Star of the Caribbean” slogan being dropped, instead favoring the pre-merger slogan “THE Caribbean Airline.”

The Miami investor who bought Caribbean Sun Airlines would restart the carrier in 2010 under the name of World Atlantic Airways. World Atlantic Airways now operates a fleet of six McDonnell-Douglas MD-80s for charter use.

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Ian McMurtry

Although Ian McMurtry was never originally an avgeek, he did enjoy watching US Airways aircraft across western Pennsylvania in the early 2000s. He lived along the Pennsylvania Railroad and took a liking to trains but a change of scenery in the mid-2000s saw him shift more of an interest into aviation. He would eventually express this passion by taking flying lessons in mid-Missouri and joining AirlineGeeks in 2013. Now living in Wichita, Kansas, Ian is in college majoring in aerospace engineering and minoring in business administration at Wichita State University.

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