LIAT resumes flights

St John’s – The cash-strapped regional airline, LIAT, Monday resumed its commercial schedule with flights operating to a limited number of destinations.

The Antigua-based LIAT, to which an administrator has been appointed, said there will be flights five days a week to seven destinations across its network.

The seven destinations are: Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, St Lucia, St Kitts, and St Vincent. LIAT said that the limited schedule of flights will return connectivity to destinations which were affected by the airline’s suspension of commercial services in March due to financial problems and the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic that forced some Caribbean countries to close their borders.

The first resumed flight left Antigua for Barbados at 9 a.m. on Monday, and Minister of Foreign Affairs E.P. Chet Greene said the resumption of flights “is more than an Antigua success, but a regional success”.

“As we factor in the regional integration process, we will be able to move goods and services across the region. The whole question of the region reopening eventually for tourism also puts LIAT in a good position in terms of the feeder services it provides.

“So for all those reasons and more there is no region in the world that operates without a regional carrier and so the sub-region of the OECS [Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States] in particular is counting on LIAT for its services . . . . To have LIAT back in the skies at this time it augurs well for the development of the sub-region . . . and it portrays us a modern developing society,” Greene said on the Observer Radio here.

Prior to its collapse, LIAT, which owes creditors an estimated EC$100 million, flew to 21 destinations, operating an average of 112 daily flights within a complex network combining profitable and uneconomic routes.

LIAT, whose former major shareholders were the governments of Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica and St Vincent and the Grenadines, said it will announce the addition of other destinations to the schedule for December 2020.

The airline, which said it has completed all the training and regulatory requirements for the territories, also indicated that several new procedures have been implemented to ensure the safety of staff and passengers as well as reduce the risk of transmission of the coronavirus.

“These include the mandatory wearing of masks at check-in and on board, enhancement in its cleaning and sanitisation protocols and new boarding procedures.”

The court-appointed administrator, Cleveland Seaforth, said the former employees of the regional airline LIAT are owed an estimated EC$80 million in severance payments, but that payment will not be made in the near future. (CMC)