More than two dozen states and territories share Caribbean airspace under overlapping regulatory regimes, a fragmentation that regional aviation stakeholders have again urged governments to resolve through deeper cross-border cooperation on safety and resilience.

The latest appeal aligns with positions the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has flagged through its Universal Safety Oversight Audit Programme (USOAP). USOAP audits measure state performance against the eight critical elements of safety oversight, an exercise that has produced lower effective implementation scores for small island developing states than for larger federal systems.

What does the regulatory map look like?

The Caribbean's airspace, crossed by major North Atlantic routes, supports primary hubs at Nassau, Kingston, Bridgetown, and Port of Spain. The Caribbean Aviation Safety and Security Oversight System (CASSOS) pools oversight functions across several participating states; the Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Dominican Republic maintain independent authorities. Overseas territories fall under the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), or the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Operators moving aircraft, crews, and certifications across these borders contend with multiple regimes, each holding different design, production, and continuing airworthiness rules.

Where does cooperation already exist?

CASSOS, established under a multilateral agreement in the late 2000s, offers the region's clearest pooling arrangement. Member states contribute personnel and financing to a shared organisation that conducts certification, surveillance, and accident investigation on their behalf. The model has trimmed duplicated cost in participating jurisdictions, though uneven adoption of CASSOS recommendations persists. ICAO's Regional Sub-Office in Mexico City and the Caribbean Project Office under the Cooperative Arrangement for the Prevention of Spread of Communicable Disease through Air Travel (CAPSCA) provide additional cross-cutting coordination, from accident investigation to pandemic readiness.

Why has resilience grown harder?

The Caribbean's climate profile adds a dimension no ICAO audit captures directly. Hurricane Irma struck in September 2017, damaging or destroying terminal infrastructure from Saint Martin to Anguilla. Hurricane Maria compounded losses in Dominica weeks later. Recovery on both islands took years and exposed how thinly spread repair capacity remains across small jurisdictions. Diversion planning across the eastern Caribbean runs into a scarcity of long runways and instrument approaches; a single tropical storm can ground a fleet for two or three days, with revenue consequences cascading into missed connections at Miami, Atlanta, and Panama City.

What does it cost?

Tourism accounts for more than half of GDP in several Caribbean economies, making aviation a critical-if-vulnerable conduit. Smaller states cannot easily sustain the cost of separate inspector cadres, simulator oversight, and accident-investigation readiness. A pooled approach lowers both payroll and training burdens, but only if participating states cede portions of their national authority. The Bahamas' independence from CASSOS reflects that calculation, given the country's larger fleet of international operators.

How have airlines adapted?

Caribbean Airlines, headquartered in Trinidad and Tobago, and interCaribbean Airways, based in Jamaica and expanded after regional carrier LIAT's 2020 wind-down, operate across most of the patchwork. Bahamasair focuses on domestic and Bahamian connections. Each pays compliance overhead that a mainland US carrier of equivalent fleet size would not face, from per-state registration changes to redundant maintenance sign-offs. Resilient operations-by-design has become a selling point: hardened hangars, redundant navigation aids, and pre-positioned mutual-aid pacts sit on ICAO's recommended resilience list, but adoption varies across jurisdictions.

What happens next?

Whether the latest call translates from rhetoric into formal action will depend on funding for pooled functions and political willingness to share airspace sovereignty. If states converge on harmonised certification, operators could see lower compliance costs, faster fleet transitions, and cleaner route expansion across the eastern Caribbean. If they do not, the next major weather event will likely expose the same operational seams as Irma and Maria. The runway between Caribbean coordination and full regional resilience has rarely looked longer.