St. John’s, Antigua and Barbuda (Commonwealth Union)_Gaston Browne, the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, says he shares Dickon Mitchell’s worries and that if Caribbean states are unable to resolve the regional transportation sector by year’s end, his administration is willing to lease an aircraft. The collapse of LIAT (1974) limited, an Antigua-based regional airline, has disrupted Caribbean travel, and residents of the region who travel are miffed at not being able to move around as easily as they could under LIAT’s operations.
Last Friday, Mitchell stated that the regional airline industry needed “immediate repair” and that more definitive action on the problem is required before the year’s end in an exclusive interview that was broadcast on WPG10 in Grenada. If an agreement isn’t reached by October or November, Grenada will have to rent planes in order to operate flights between Grenada and Barbados and Trinidad & Tobago.
On Sunday, PM Browne stated on the publicly owned ABS Radio and Television that Mitchell had a point if “we don’t scale up LIAT” in the interim. “I believe that the Caribbean will have a very robust tourism season in 2022, so we cannot have LIAT with three planes and do nothing. In order to add two more planes within the next few months and perhaps have them ready for the upcoming season, that is what we intend to do,” he said.
The Prime Minister added that talks with a leaser are presently underway and that efforts are being made to expand the LIAT brand internationally.
According to him, there is an “initiative with a Chinese group in which they are about to incorporate a new LIAT entity, LIAT International, and they are ready to operate international flights, most likely to China, Frankfurt (Germany), Antigua, and also to operate some charters with other some South American destinations where LIAT does not service.”
The government and CFA Global, a division of the private regional enterprise Caribbean Tourism Group (CTG), which makes investments in travel, tourism, and aviation, inked a memorandum of understanding (MOU) last week.
