Robert Pitcher says its time for the LIAT board to go. (MG)

by Julie Wilson

SACK THE LIAT BOARD and streamline the staff.

These are just two recommendations that businessman Robert Pitcher has made as part of a management shake-up at the regional carrier to improve
its struggling operations.

The creative marketing consultant, who has more than four decades of experience in tourism and publishing, told BARBADOS BUSINESS AUTHORITY Thursday that LIAT chief executive officer Mark Darby should be given the opportunity to resign.

He said a new board should comprise a group of Caribbean businesspersons who worked in the industry and had intimate knowledge of Caribbean travel.

Pitcher also insisted that a new LIAT board and its CEO should be mandated to not only make the airline profitable but make it more affordable for Caribbean people to travel within the region.

He warned LIAT could face stiff competition from other carriers launching southbound charter services to St Lucia, St Vincent, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, and Grenada.

LIAT chairman Dr Jean Holder has rejected Pitcher's charges, however, saying that the present board had been able to erase most of the airline's
debt and it was operating virtually debt-free.

"The company has come from millions and millions of dollars in losses to a point where it has been looking at an operating profit in 2007.

"I have not heard of any other private sector board running an airline in this region which has been able to achieve that," Holder said.