In­ter­Caribbean Air­ways, which ser­vices cer­tain des­ti­na­tions in the east­ern, west­ern and south­ern Caribbean is fi­nan­cial­ly sta­ble and is here to stay.
That’s the rev­e­la­tion from founder and chair­man Lyn­don Gar­diner, as he re­spond­ed to the num­ber of in­ter­rup­tions that have caused frus­tra­tion and in­con­ve­nience for pas­sen­gers across the net­work in the last month in­to this month.

Last Sun­day, Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent, Ralph Gon­salves, knocked the qual­i­ty of the ser­vice, dub­bing it as “ex­treme­ly ter­ri­ble”.  
He said that he is now an­tic­i­pat­ing the re­ceipt of a doc­u­ment from the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB) about the es­tab­lish­ment of a new Lee­ward Is­lands Air Trans­port (LI­AT).

“I am await­ing a doc­u­ment from the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank for a new Li­at, which I sus­pect is a re­sult of the dis­cus­sion I had with the pres­i­dent of the CDB and his team a few weeks ago, in which I sug­gest­ed some prac­ti­cal things to them,” said Gon­salves.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, Gar­diner said peo­ple in Gov­ern­ment who have lots to say about the air­line are not mak­ing it eas­i­er.

“In some in­stances, we can get peo­ple to their des­ti­na­tions. How­ev­er, if the air­port’s closed be­cause some­thing is not func­tion­ing at the air­port, or they have a hard cut-off time. That doesn’t help the sit­u­a­tion ei­ther. So, it’s very easy to join the cause, and cuss us out and say how bad­ly we’re do­ing. But, you know, it’s bet­ter to reach out and see what the is­sues are and how we can work to­geth­er in a part­ner­ship to have a bet­ter out­come,” he lament­ed.

Gar­diner said the air­line, head­quar­tered in Turks and Caicos, con­nects 28 cities across 17 coun­tries in the Caribbean, which in­clude An­tigua, Bar­ba­dos, Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, Guyana, St Lu­cia, and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, and Ha­vana, Cu­ba.
He ad­mit­ted that In­ter Caribbean is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing staffing is­sues and is work­ing on it.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, you know, we have the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple that don’t get to the des­ti­na­tion or that don’t get to the ser­vice that they were ex­pect­ing, and rather than con­tact­ing the air­line, they just think it is bet­ter to go on so­cial me­dia and vent. You know, we’ve had peo­ple com­plain­ing about not get­ting a re­fund ten min­utes af­ter send­ing an email ask­ing for a re­fund. That’s un­rea­son­able be­cause no air­line can process a re­fund with­in ten min­utes,” Gar­diner ex­plained.

He said that it is very cost­ly to run an air­line and he be­lieves that the high cost is what ran LI­AT in­to bank­rupt­cy.
The founder and chair­man of the 32-year-old air­line de­bunked all ru­mours that the com­pa­ny is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties.

“We cer­tain­ly are not en­coun­ter­ing any fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties. We have a fair­ly round­ed avi­a­tion en­ter­prise. The com­pa­ny does a lot of dif­fer­ent things con­nect­ed with avi­a­tion, not just fly­ing. The is­sues we are hav­ing are all hu­man re­source-re­lat­ed, es­pe­cial­ly with pi­lots, as you know you can­not just take some­one off the streets and tell them to fly a plane. Caribbean Air­lines has al­so tar­get­ed some of our pi­lots, so we do have some con­straints in that re­gard,” Gar­diner dis­closed.

Robert Reis, the Guyana Hon­orary Con­sul in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, ear­li­er this month raised is­sues con­cern­ing cus­tomer ser­vice ex­pe­ri­ences with the air­line.  

Reis called on the gov­ern­ments of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da and Guyana to en­gage with In­ter Caribbean Air­lines.
He said that “since per­mis­sion for the air­line to op­er­ate with­in the re­gion has been grant­ed by these gov­ern­ments, they are right­ful­ly po­si­tioned to in­sist that the con­trac­tu­al ser­vice agree­ments are ho­n­oured.”

The Busi­ness Guardian reached out to In­ter­Caribbean pas­sen­ger Megan Thomas from Guyana, who said she trav­elled with the air­line a few weeks ago from Do­mini­ca to Guyana and the de­lays were ex­ces­sive.

“I hope this air­line gets their act to­geth­er. While we are hap­py they are ser­vic­ing the routes that LI­AT used to fly, they must do bet­ter, be­cause I missed my cousin’s fu­ner­al, due to the long de­lays,” Thomas said.

Asked if gov­ern­ments should di­a­logue with the air­line to set­tle the dif­fer­ent is­sues, Gar­diner said “yes”.

“Well, I think so for what­ev­er rea­son, you know, some gov­ern­ments still want to be in the air­line busi­ness. And, you know, they’ve nev­er re­al­ly ac­cept­ed. They’ve nev­er re­al­ly ac­cept­ed us but they were quite hap­py to have us when there was COVID. And no one was there. You know, we flew around, we lost mon­ey. We took the risk. We con­tin­ued to ser­vice, and they were hap­py then. Now things are com­ing back. You know, some are quite will­ing to take a cheap shot at us when you know, when we were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing these dif­fi­cul­ties,” he said.

Air­line here to stay

He made it clear that the air­line is here to stay, and they are cur­rent­ly in the process of re­cruit­ing pi­lots and flight at­ten­dants out­side the re­gion.

“I’m pleased to say that a new air­plane came out on Fri­day, and we have an­oth­er 50-seat Em­braer 145 jet that’s go­ing to go in­to ser­vice by the end of this month, and then we’ve got a third air­plane that’s go­ing to join some­time in Sep­tem­ber.

Then in Oc­to­ber, No­vem­ber, and De­cem­ber more will join the fleet bring­ing the fleet up to 28 air­planes,” Gar­diner re­marked.
Asked to com­ment about the flight can­cel­la­tions, Caribbean Air­lines went through last week­end, due to sick pi­lots and if its com­mu­ni­ca­tion strat­e­gy was good enough, the founder and chair­man said “We’ve learned the hard way over the last cou­ple of months that you can­not over-com­mu­ni­cate. And the air­line is do­ing its best to see things be­fore it hap­pens and be­gin the com­mu­ni­ca­tion so that peo­ple know, and have rea­son­able ex­pec­ta­tions of what the out­comes are go­ing to be.”

Gar­diner added that he was born in the Caribbean and he is striv­ing very hard to pro­vide a well-need­ed ser­vice to his fel­low Caribbean peo­ple.  

“I feel that while peo­ple are dis­ap­point­ed when they can’t get to trav­el, they hold me to a dif­fer­ent stan­dard. I mean, Amer­i­can Air­lines has de­lays, as well. A friend of mine was try­ing to leave Guyana for five days and I have peo­ple in Grena­da that were stuck for three days, but you would not see this sur­fac­ing on so­cial me­dia. In­ter Caribbean is a pri­vate air­line, whilst I agree that we need to pro­vide the best ser­vice that any­one can pro­vide. I think peo­ple need to al­so be un­der­stand­ing of the present chal­lenges,” he con­clud­ed.