BRENT PIN­HEIRO

Pro­duc­er

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

An­tigua-based air­line LI­AT20 has be­gun sched­uled ser­vice to Trinidad. LI­AT20’s 5N-BUV, an Em­braer ERJ-145 op­er­at­ing as 5L365, touched down at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Thurs­day with 15 pas­sen­gers on board from An­tigua.

It marks the start of a five time (5x) week­ly com­mer­cial ser­vice with the air­line link­ing Port of Spain to Grena­da, Bar­ba­dos, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, St. Lu­cia, and An­tigua & Bar­bu­da.

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

Passengers on LIAT20’s inaugural flight from Antigua disembark at Piarco International, on Thursday 19 December 2024. [Image by BRENT PINHEIRO]

Ac­cord­ing to Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell, the Caribbean is T&T’s 2nd largest source mar­ket with Caribbean ar­rivals ac­count­ing for 20% of all ar­rivals.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al, 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,” he as­sert­ed.  “The de­mand is there for both play­ers to serve the mar­ket well and for them to do it prof­itably.”

L to R – LIAT20 Chief Operating Officer, Kidus Melkamu; LIAT20 Chief Executive Officer, Hafsah Abdulsalam; Works and Transport Minister Rohan Sinanan; and Minister of Tourism, Culture and the Arts, Senator Randall Mitchell, at the ribbon cutting ceremony to mark LIAT20’s inaugural flight from Antigua to Piarco International, on Thursday 19 December 2024. [Image by BRENT PINHEIRO]

The name LI­AT20 may evoke mem­o­ries of the now de­funct LI­AT1974, but it is an en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent air­line—a part­ner­ship be­tween Air Peace and the gov­ern­ment of An­tigua & Bar­bu­da, which has as 30% stake in the air­line.

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

“For us—new LI­AT, new man­age­ment, 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,” she af­firmed.

Trinidad is the 12th des­ti­na­tion in LI­AT20’s net­work since it be­gan op­er­a­tions on Au­gust 6, 2024.

The air­line be­gins ser­vice to Kingston, Ja­maica on Fri­day.