An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior mul­ti­me­dia re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

LI­AT2020 start­ed fly­ing in Au­gust 2024, but al­ready has plans to ex­pand in­to ad­di­tion­al re­gion­al mar­kets and to in­ter­na­tion­al ones.

This comes five years af­ter tak­ing over own­er­ship of the cash-strapped LI­AT (1974) Ltd and re­plac­ing it with LI­AT2020 in part­ner­ship with Air Peace in the Caribbean.

LI­AT2020’s chief com­mer­cial of­fi­cer, Tosan Bani told Busi­ness Guardian in An­tigua last week, that since tak­ing to the skies, the air­line has ex­pand­ed in­to 13 Caribbean mar­kets and is al­so look­ing at fur­ther ex­pand­ing that foot­print­to Be­lize.

“We’re cur­rent­ly talk­ing to Be­lize to see how we can move in­to Be­lize. Con­nect­ing Be­lize via Kingston. And we’re al­so ex­pand­ing in­to Pana­ma. So, we’ve had a dis­cus­sion with the au­thor­i­ties in Pana­ma.”

Bani said the air­line al­so plans to fly to Suri­name and is in the fi­nal stage of the civ­il avi­a­tion part of the per­mit in­to Suri­name.  

“The air­line is test­ing the wa­ters in Colom­bia.  So we’re go­ing to have a char­ter op­er­a­tion in Ju­ly to Colom­bia, to see how that pans out and see if we’re go­ing to go there as a sched­uled air­line.”

Al­so, in Ju­ly Bani out­lined that it would be in­creas­ing the num­ber of flights be­tween Ja­maica and An­tigua.  

“We’re go­ing to be fly­ing from An­tigua to Kingston, Kingston to Mon­tego Bay.  So that ad­di­tion­al route will in­crease the ca­pac­i­ty of the air­craft. At the mo­ment we use the E145 to Ja­maica.  But we’re go­ing to change that in­to a big­ger, nar­row-body air­craft.  Be­cause the num­bers in Ja­maica are re­al­ly promis­ing and it’s been grow­ing,” he dis­closed.

He not­ed that in the fourth quar­ter of 2025, LI­AT2020 plans to lease a 777 air­craft to do long-haul flights to Lon­don and La­gos and al­so to Mi­a­mi.

By the fourth quar­ter of 2026, the air­line will be eye­ing ex­pan­sion in the Unit­ed King­dom.

As it per­tains to the many prob­lems the old LI­AT had, es­pe­cial­ly with late ar­rivals at des­ti­na­tions, the air­line ex­ec­u­tive said while it’s quite dif­fer­ent now, there are some chal­lenges, as some­times the air­line has to make changes to the sched­ule due to main­te­nance is­sues or weath­er.

 “There might be some can­cel­la­tions. But what we try to do is to make sure we ac­com­mo­date these cus­tomers. We put them in ho­tels overnight and al­so give them vouch­ers just to com­pen­sate for the in­con­ve­nience that they suf­fered due to our sched­ule change. It has im­proved over time, and we are not the for­mer air­line when it comes to the han­dling of dis­rup­tions,” he de­tailed.

Asked about the own­er­ship of the air­line, which still us­es the name LI­AT, Bani in­di­cat­ed that the An­tigua and Bar­bu­da gov­ern­ment has 30 per cent of it and Air Peace Caribbean, which is a com­pa­ny reg­is­tered in An­tigua, has 70 per cent.

“ LI­AT2020 is the na­tion­al car­ri­er for An­tigua at the mo­ment. Well, it’s a start­up and we know it’s go­ing to be a strug­gle for a start.”

On how the air­line is do­ing in the mar­kets it is cur­rent­ly in, Bani high­light­ed some routes are promis­ing and have been do­ing very well, while some of them are still strug­gling.

How­ev­er, he in­di­cat­ed that the air­line is do­ing as much as it can, mar­ket­ing-wise, to make sure those routes al­so come to par with the oth­ers.

 “These routes are go­ing to be fea­si­ble be­cause the mar­ket is there. The num­bers show that. We’ve an­a­lyzed the routes that we are fly­ing to be­fore we go in­to those routes to see that those num­bers are there. But since we just start­ed, we might not be see­ing the rev­enue line now, and at least we will get there. The route to Do­mini­ca has been do­ing fan­tas­ti­cal­ly well. Ja­maica, Guyana and Tor­to­la are do­ing very well.” Oth­er routes are pick­ing up, he said

Fur­ther, he said by June 3, LI­AT2020 will be op­er­at­ing in Sa­ba, which is part of the Nether­lands. That would cre­ate more chan­nels for trav­el agents, cor­po­ra­tions, and in­di­vid­u­als to al­so is­sue air­line tick­ets.

Talk­ing about the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Niger­ian Air Peace and LI­AT2020, Bani said there is no re­la­tion be­tween the two.

“They’re dif­fer­ent. The air­craft is cur­rent­ly on an Air­craft, Crew, Main­te­nance, and In­sur­ance (AC­MI) lease. It’s go­ing to have all this in­for­ma­tion about the air­line that owns the air­craft. But by Au­gust, we’ll be tak­ing those air­craft. We’ll be buy­ing them off. There will be a new lay­out for the air­craft and all those things you cur­rent­ly see on the air­craft will be changed and up­grades will al­so be done,” he ex­plained.

Re­gion­al tax­es

Re­gard­ing the re­gion­al tax­es that air­lines have been bit­ter­ly com­plain­ing about for decades, the CCO said there are two sets of tax­es: nor­mal gov­ern­ment tax­es and air­port tax­es.

“It is on the high side and we’re hop­ing to do some­thing about them. But for now, we’re stuck with them. The air­lines are stuck with them un­til the gov­ern­ments of Cari­com come to­geth­er and agree on some­thing. Air­port tax­es are on the high side, not so much the gov­ern­ment tax­es and you wouldn’t, so to speak, blame the air­ports for that, as they al­so have ex­pens­es to cov­er. The air­ports have rent they need to pay and new de­vel­op­ments they need to do at the air­ports. I strong­ly be­lieve that if the gov­ern­ments come to­geth­er to agree on some­thing they can bring the tax­es a lit­tle bit low­er. That way, it gives more dis­pos­able in­come for peo­ple to be able to buy more tick­ets and be able to fly more,” he added.

Last week In­ter­Caribbean Air­ways CEO Trevor Sadler told Busi­ness Guardian that for re­gion­al trav­el to grow, there must be a big­ger buy-in from re­gion­al gov­ern­ments who will not charge a re­gion­al trav­eller at the same tax rate as an in­ter­na­tion­al trav­eller.

  “Af­ter all, the Caribbean is the home for forty-some­thing mil­lion peo­ple, and as much as we are is­lands apart here, fi­nan­cial­ly get­ting from one to the oth­er is quite a bur­den. ... I would hon­est­ly be­lieve re­gion­al trav­el would see maybe two and a half times the vol­ume we see to­day, even if we cut the tax­es by 50 per cent and a cre­ate re­gion­al trav­el tax.”

How­ev­er, Sadler added that it’s go­ing to be a bold gov­ern­ment that takes the step to re­duce tax­a­tion.

  “Every coun­try has the chance to im­prove. A lot of the re­gion­al trav­el is go­ing to vis­it friends and fam­i­ly, (trav­ellers) may stay in fam­i­ly homes, but they’re go­ing to go out to din­ner, they’re still go­ing to be part of the spend. That spend­ing is not go­ing to be lost.”