Business
Struggling regional airline, LIAT to axe unprofitable routes
Regional airline, Leeward Islands Air Transport (LIAT), says it will take “decisive action” to deal with unprofitable routes as the struggling Antigua & Barbuda-based airline seeks to make its operations financially variable.
“We have been trying, before going the harsh route, to persuade people to invest. We have met with a number of governments and Prime Ministers, we have expressed to them that we will have no other option but to cut the service,” LIAT chairman Jean Holder told a news conference on Thursday evening.
“I think we have reached the point, after a lot of challenges, where we need to do as we say that we will do. That may after all be more effective than the persuasion route,” Holder said after a meeting of the shareholder governments.
“We will have to take a very hard look at our current schedules and the profitability of our current routes. We have brought in some experts to assist us in looking more deeply into the route analysis issues, but it is clear that LIAT cannot continue to provide essential social services to 21 countries in the Caribbean on a daily basis, offering close to 1 000 flights weekly, and only four countries put any funds into this operation,” said Holder.
Holder said that this would involve reshaping the routing system in a way that would ensure there is no longer an abundance of social routes at the expense of commercial operations.
In October 2012, then CEO of LIAT, Ian Brunton, had warned that the cash-strapped carrier would soon be dropping at least 8 routes deemed to be consistently unprofitable.
He said that the situation would only change if the airline, whose major shareholders are Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica and St. Vincent & the Grenadines, was able to secure some kind of support from affected governments.
