The court-ap­point­ed ad­min­is­tra­tor for the cash-strapped re­gion­al air­line, LI­AT, Cleve­land Seaforth, says the air­line will wind up its op­er­a­tions in its cur­rent form on Jan­u­ary 24 this year.

In a let­ter to staff out­lin­ing the lat­est po­si­tion re­gard­ing the An­tigua-based LI­AT (1974) Ltd, Seaforth wrote, “Af­ter care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion and eval­u­a­tion of the present op­er­a­tions, a de­ci­sion has been tak­en by the court-ap­point­ed Ad­min­is­tra­tor to per­ma­nent­ly cease all com­mer­cial fly­ing op­er­a­tions as of close of busi­ness on Jan­u­ary 24, 2024.

“As a re­sult of the fore­go­ing, you are here­by no­ti­fied that your em­ploy­ment with LI­AT (1974) Lim­it­ed (in ad­min­is­tra­tion) will be made re­dun­dant ef­fec­tive Feb­ru­ary 4, 2024.”

The move is ex­pect­ed to re­sult in more than 90 em­ploy­ees be­ing made re­dun­dant with­out any pay­ment and a promise that oblig­a­tions will be met.

The air­line is owned by the gov­ern­ments of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Bar­ba­dos, Do­mini­ca and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines and dur­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion of his coun­try’s na­tion­al bud­get last month, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne said his gov­ern­ment had em­braced the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to re­struc­ture and res­ur­rect LI­AT, with a “with a vi­sion of re­turn­ing the air­line to the re­gion­al skies”.

Browne said the air­line, which has been un­der ad­min­is­tra­tion since Ju­ly 24, 2020, “has long been an es­sen­tial thread in the fab­ric of Caribbean con­nec­tiv­i­ty”.

Browne said that the Bar­ba­dos-based Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB) will play a crit­i­cal role in so­lid­i­fy­ing the arrange­ment among the gov­ern­ments, adding that this will set the stage for fi­nal­is­ing the arrange­ment with Air Peace, a pri­vate Niger­ian air­line found­ed in 2013, “so that LI­AT 2020 can be­gin op­er­a­tions, there­by se­cur­ing a promis­ing fu­ture for re­gion­al trav­el”.

Browne said that in 2024, the An­tigua and Bar­bu­da gov­ern­ment will spend an es­ti­mat­ed EC$30 mil­lion (One EC dol­lar=US$0.37 cents) to “en­sure LI­AT 2020 Ltd has all the air­craft need­ed and ap­pro­pri­ate main­te­nance and op­er­a­tional arrange­ments are in place for the safe, re­li­able, and ef­fi­cient de­liv­ery of ser­vice to the peo­ple of the re­gion.”

In his let­ter, Seaforth told the staff the com­pa­ny was not in a po­si­tion to make any sev­er­ance pay­ments at this stage, but in­di­cat­ed that it would not be shy­ing away from its oblig­a­tions to them on sev­er­ance, va­ca­tion pay, retroac­tive pay and any out­stand­ing salaries.