Carlton Defour, General Manager South America, Caribbean Airlines

General Manager South America of Caribbean Airlines, Carlton Defour, said operationally the transition went "very well." He added that the new airline will be rationalising on flights servicing Guyana.

On December 31, BWIA ground to a halt after 66 years of service to the Caribbean and in its place, Caribbean Airlines, with its new-look "humming bird" logo, took to the skies.

Caribbean Airlines set off its first flight on Sunday from Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, to Guyana. Defour said the major challenges have come from within the airline, given the changes to the accounting system and other strategic areas.

"We have had no negative feedback from passengers and I can safely say that for the first days of operation.

Everything is going well. We had very few hiccups with flights leaving Guyana, but flights went out on time," Defour said.

Defour noted that during the transition phase, the company lost some 20 percent of its staff, with some of those retained having to relocate to other positions within Caribbean Airlines.

Defour said that there will be no new routes from Guyana within the next few months, but there will be a reduction of flights out – from three flights per day to two.

In September the airline announced that it had cut flights from Guyana to Manchester, England, and in October the airline further announced that it was stopping flights from Guyana to Washington, USA. Both routes were said to be non-profitable.

The closure of BWIA follows years of financial turbulence and fuels mounting uncertainty about the Caribbean airline industry. Peter Davies, CEO of both BWIA and Caribbean Airlines, said a number of factors, including failure to reach an agreement with the unions, led to his recommendation to the Trinidadian government that it close BWIA.