A much-needed regional airline is still stuck on the runway because regional governments won’t help pay for the full revival of LIAT.
During the press briefing after Cabinet, Information Minister Melford Nicholas said that Prime Minister Gaston Browne, who went to St. Lucia for a special meeting of the CARICOM Heads of Government more than a week ago, said that other Caribbean governments didn’t want to “embrace LIAT.”
A government statement said that the meeting was mostly about getting LIAT back up and running and how trade and air travel are linked in the region.
After LIAT (1974) Ltd went out of business in 2020, mostly because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the government of Antigua and Barbuda, led by Prime Minister Gaston Browne, tried to quickly set up the new LIAT (2020) Ltd, which has been running on a smaller scale.
But the meeting last week didn’t lead to anything useful for the Gaston Browne administration, as questions about how the new airline will be financed in the region remain unanswered.
“Everyone has felt the loss of LIAT, and we are still committed to it, but I think the Prime Minister will talk about it more at the right time, and for LIAT 2020, the sky is still the limit,” Minister Nicholas said.
Many people in the Caribbean have said that they need a regional airline because travel costs within the region are still high.
But Minister Nicholas said that a “joint venture agreement” with another airline might be a possibility.
“With an airline like Air Peace, there might be a chance for some kind of joint venture that could help LIAT grow and get back on its feet, as well as get its services from [Africa] to the Caribbean,” he said.
Air Peace is a private airline based in Lagos, Nigeria. It is owned by Allen Onyema, who is also the CEO. At first, Air Peace was in talks with the Cabinet about starting commercial flights between Nigeria and Antigua. These plans were scrapped when Air Peace said it wanted to start flying to Jamaica because the rules in the Eastern Caribbean were too hard to follow.
