Brent Pin­heiro

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

An­tigua-based air­line LI­AT20 be­gan a sched­uled ser­vice to Trinidad yes­ter­day. 

LI­AT20’s 5N-BUV, an Em­braer ERJ-145 op­er­at­ing as 5L365, touched down at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port yes­ter­day with 15 pas­sen­gers on board from An­tigua. 

It marks the start of a five-times-a-week com­mer­cial ser­vice with the air­line link­ing Port-of-Spain to Grena­da, Bar­ba­dos, St Vin­cent & the Grenadines, St Lu­cia and An­tigua & Bar­bu­da. 

LI­AT20 will add 1,750 seats to the mar­ket week­ly. 

Speak­ing at the route launch, Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts, Ran­dall Mitchell, said the Caribbean is T&T’s sec­ond largest source mar­ket with the re­gion ac­count­ing for 20 per cent of all ar­rivals. 

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, he em­pha­sised the gov­ern­ment’s goal to in­crease re­gion­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty say­ing, “It re­al­ly is an im­por­tant route, open­ing up this air­lift, open­ing up the seat ca­pac­i­ty, for per­sons to come here and of course mak­ing the jour­ney with­in the Caribbean all the more eco­nom­i­cal.” 

Mitchell al­so dis­missed con­cerns that LI­AT20 would push lo­cal car­ri­er Caribbean Air­lines out of some routes. 

“Com­pe­ti­tion is good, the de­mand is there for both play­ers to serve the mar­ket well and for them to do it prof­itably,” said Mitchell. 

The name LI­AT20 may evoke mem­o­ries of the now-de­funct LI­AT (1974), but it is an en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent air­line. LI­AT20 is a part­ner­ship be­tween Niger­ian air­line, Air Peace, and the gov­ern­ment of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da. Air Peace owns 70 per cent of LI­AT20, while the An­tiguan gov­ern­ment has a 30 per cent stake in the air­line. 

LI­AT (1974) Ltd per­ma­nent­ly ceased all com­mer­cial fly­ing op­er­a­tions on Jan­u­ary 24, 2024. It was ma­jor­i­ty owned by Bar­ba­dos, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

While LI­AT20 CEO Haf­sah Ab­dul­salam ac­knowl­edged the pub­lic’s pre­vi­ous moniker for LI­AT (1974) Ltd as ‘Leave Is­land Any Time,’ she em­pha­sised that this is a new air­line with a new mis­sion. 

“For us, this is a new LI­AT, with new man­age­ment and new brand­ing. It means we will be avail­able to fly you when­ev­er you want to fly. And when we com­mit to a time and a ser­vice, we will be de­liv­er­ing that ser­vice to you,” said Ab­dul­salam.  

Trinidad is the 12th des­ti­na­tion in LI­AT20’s net­work since it be­gan op­er­a­tions on Au­gust 6. The air­line be­gins ser­vice to Kingston, Ja­maica on Fri­day.