Brent Pin­heiro

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

An­tigua-based air­line, LI­AT 2020 Ltd, is one step clos­er to tak­ing to the re­gion­al skies af­ter it re­ceived its first two jet air­craft. The two Em­braer ERJ 145s, bear­ing reg­is­tra­tions 5N-BVD and 5N-BXG, touched down at An­tigua’s V.C. Bird In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port with­in min­utes of each oth­er on Tues­day af­ter­noon. Both re­ceived a wa­ter can­non salute, tra­di­tion­al­ly used to cel­e­brate mile­stones in avi­a­tion. An­tigua & Bar­bu­da prime min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne led a small team on­board to in­spect the air­craft’s in­te­ri­or be­fore a short wel­come cer­e­mo­ny was held on the tar­mac.

PM Gaston Browne and team onboard one of LIAT2020‘s first jets. Photo: ABS - Antigua and Barbuda Broadcasting Services

Ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cials, LI­AT 2020 will re­ceive an­oth­er Em­braer ERJ 145 and a 128-seater air­craft from pri­vate Niger­ian air­line Air Peace, which has a 70 per cent stake in the com­pa­ny, lat­er this year. The An­tiguan gov­ern­ment al­so pur­chased three ex-LI­AT (1974) Ltd ATR 42-600 air­craft from the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank at a cost of US$12.1 mil­lion, bring­ing LI­AT 2020’s ex­pect­ed fleet size up to sev­en. Two of those ATRs are cur­rent­ly ground­ed and re­quire main­te­nance to bring them back to air­wor­thi­ness. Ac­cord­ing to Browne, the gov­ern­ment has com­mit­ted US$10 mil­lion to that project.

While promis­ing the new en­ti­ty would cre­ate and main­tain jobs in the avi­a­tion sec­tor, the prime min­is­ter al­so in­vit­ed to ex-LI­AT (1974) work­ers to ne­go­ti­ate di­rect­ly with his ad­min­is­tra­tion in­stead of via their union. He said, “I know the is­sue of sev­er­ance re­mains an is­sue. And where­as my ad­min­is­tra­tion has no le­gal oblig­a­tion to pay sev­er­ance, I say to those dis­placed work­ers of LI­AT and even those who are still em­ployed with LI­AT, that my ad­min­is­tra­tion is com­mit­ted to cov­er­ing the 32% sev­er­ance rep­re­sent­ing the share­hold­ing that my gov­ern­ment had in LI­AT at the time. In fact, I say to you that where­as the union has been an im­ped­i­ment, my ad­min­is­tra­tion is now pre­pared to ne­go­ti­ate di­rect­ly with the LI­AT staff. And to put a mech­a­nism in place to make sure that that 32% is paid to you.”

The An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Work­ers Union (AB­WU) has pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed that it would seek a 100 per cent sev­er­ance pay­ment for for­mer em­ploy­ees.

None of the air­line’s ini­tial routes has been re­vealed but Browne said LI­AT 2020 would con­nect the Caribbean safe­ly and af­ford­ably. He called on peo­ple across the re­gion to sup­port LI­AT as a Caribbean brand. He al­so re­vealed that the 128-seater air­craft pro­vid­ed by Air Peace could po­ten­tial­ly be used on an An­tigua-Mi­a­mi route.

Ac­cord­ing to cab­i­net notes from April 17, the gov­ern­ment is seek­ing to ad­dress its “Open Skies Agree­ment” with the USA and up­date an Air Ser­vices Agree­ment (ASA) be­tween An­tigua and the USA dat­ing back to 1977. This ASA would al­low car­ri­ers from An­tigua and Bar­bu­da to en­ter US ter­ri­to­ries such as Puer­to Ri­co, the US Vir­gin Is­lands, and the con­ti­nen­tal USA, and of­fer rec­i­p­ro­cal rights to Amer­i­can car­ri­ers.

As for when the car­ri­er will op­er­ate its first com­mer­cial flight Haf­sah Ab­sul­salam, LI­AT’s project lead, would on­ly say it was “around the cor­ner”. She said, “With­in weeks we are hop­ing to launch the air­line. We will be hit­ting the road with our mar­ket­ing cam­paign to tell you what our ser­vices are about. Nat­u­ral­ly, the is­lands where we take our demon­stra­tion flights will be the first to be added to our sched­ule. With that in mind we are get­ting our op­er­a­tional readi­ness in place to en­sure us able to be­gin op­er­a­tions.”

The air­line’s abil­i­ty to op­er­ate com­mer­cial flights hinges on the East­ern Caribbean Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty (EC­CAA) is­su­ing the Air Op­er­a­tor Cer­tifi­cate (AOC). The air­line has been con­duct­ing de­mo flights how­ev­er, and of­fi­cials ex­pect the AOC to be is­sued next week.

LI­AT 2020 hopes to fill the void left by LI­AT (1974) Ltd which op­er­at­ed its fi­nal com­mer­cial flight on Jan­u­ary 22nd, 2024. LI­AT (1974) op­er­at­ed a lim­it­ed sched­ule for sev­er­al years af­ter it was placed un­der ad­min­is­tra­tion in 2020.