- Of Liat2020, Gonsalves said, I’m hopeful that they will come!
Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves said on Sunday he is hopeful that LIAT2020 will fly to St. Vincent (SVG). On Tuesday 6, LIAT 2020 took to the skies; however, the airline did not include St. Vincent and the Grenadines on its list of immediate routes.
Gonsalves stated that, while he does not have an update on when the airline will fly into SVG, airline officials are expected to come to Kingstown for a meeting.
“I don’t have an update; the CEO and I had informal discussions on the margins of the CARICOM meeting recently, and they’re supposed to come for us to have a discussion.”
“I’m hopeful that they will come. I told them that they were welcome. We’ll have space to accommodate them if they want to set up any offices and so forth. I told them we will fully cooperate, as I told Gaston Brown, and Gaston knows that.”
Gonsalves said he thinks it’s a matter of a limited number of aircraft at the moment.
“I think what’s happening is that they have a limited number of planes at the moment, and they are awaiting further expansion. So I think this has to be more of their internal planning. They’re rolling out in some rational manner from their perspective.”
Last Tuesday CEO Hafsaf Abdulsalam said LIAT 2020 will run the Antigua/St. Lucia route for the next two weeks, with hopes to expand shortly, and will include flights to Barbados, Grenada, Dominica, and St. Kitts & Nevis.
Abdulsalam also stated that in September, the airline will add 11 new destinations and expand into larger Caribbean territories in the south, including Guyana, Trinidad, and Tobago.
LIAT2020 also plans to launch their new generation, the 128-seat E2 195 narrow-body aircraft, before the end of the first year. According to Abdulsalam, ECCA’s Cat 1 designation will enable us to increase flights to Panama and, ideally, Miami, Puerto Rico, and the British Virgin Islands.
