Pointe Express: It is almost certain now that the Antigua-based regional carrier, LIAT, will return to the skies, perhaps as early as next month.
This is the latest update from Cabinet spokesman, Minister of Information, Melford Nicholas, who said the positive news was passed on to the Cabinet by Prime Minister Gaston Browne.
“The conditions are that LIAT will be able to take to the skies in the new month [November]. I won’t hazard a precise date as there are operational issues to be worked out, but from our information, it’s a question of when, not if, that LIAT will fly again,” Nicholas declared.
Nicholas made the disclosure on Thursday morning during the post-Cabinet press briefing while addressing a question related to the coming ‘Travel Bubble’ that is being established between Barbados and the OECS territories.
“The Travel Bubble augurs well for LIAT for it means that people will be able to move with a degree of freedom within the region,” he indicated.
Nicholas added that Antigua and Barbuda is essentially a Caribbean metropolis in the context of the number of Caribbean nationals who have made the country their home.
He suggested too that the limitations on the movement of people within the region due to the COVID-19 pandemic, has likely resulted in ‘pent-up’ demand for intra-regional travel.
LIAT halted all commercial flights on April 4 this year when most of the countries within its network closed their borders to guard against the coronavirus.
Already in dire financial straits prior to the lockdown, the pandemic only served to worsen LIAT’s problems.
This led to most of the airline’s shareholder governments agreeing to liquidate the heavily indebted airline after they were unable to agree on providing another financial bailout for the airline.
Antigua and Barbuda’s prime minister, Gaston Browne, single handedly launched a campaign to save LIAT from certain death by proposing the reorganisation of the airline.
Several hundred of LIAT’s staff who are based in St. John’s contribute significantly to Antigua and Barbuda’s economy through Medical Benefits, Social Security, Education Levy and other statutory and private spending activities.
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Who is financing the return of LIAT to full operation?
Antigua and Barbuda
Good luck! I sincerely hope you are successful. It will be a monumental uphill task with little to no passengers in the region, all pilots needing to re-train for their pilot licensing due to lack of flying time since March, new competition in Caribbean Airlines and Inter-Caribbean Airlines and Covid not likely to go away for at least another year. Nevertheless, I do honestly wish LIAT luck. It would be good to see them flying again.
One thing i can tell you for certain if I’m not refunded i and most of my friends who usually travel in a group wouldn’t be flying with that brand ever a again
This is great news if they can make it happen. Fingers and toes crossed that we see her in the skies again.
Do not hold your breath!! Anything Gaston say is always pulled from mid air.
Notes From A Native Son Of The Rock! “Afrocentricity is the substance of our regeneration because it is in line with what philosophers (The Late Tim Hector and Dr. Charles Ephraim), among others, have articulated as in the best image and interest of African people. What is any better than operating and acting out of our own collective interest? What is any greater than seeing the world through our eyes? What resonates more with people than understanding that we are central to our history, not someone else’s? If we can, in the process of materializing our consciousness, claim space as agents of progressive change, then we can change our condition and change the world. Afrocentricity maintains that one can claim this space only if one knows the general characteristics of Afrocentricity as well as the practical applications of the field.” – Dr. Molefi Asante, Afrocentricity, The Theory of Social Change!
GIVE PRAISE AND THANKS!
“The Afrocentric paradigm is a revolutionary shift in thinking proposed as a constructural adjustment to black disorientation, decenteredness, and lack of agency. One of the key assumptions of the Afrocentrist is that all relationships are based on centers and margins and the distances from either the center or the margin. When black people view themselves as centered and central in their own history then they see themselves as agents, actors, and participants rather than as marginals on the periphery of political or economic experience.” – Asante!
LIAT could return in November. November of what year? Gaston Browne did say LIAT would be up in skies flying in 90 days.Those 90 days have long passed.Just like the 500 homes in 500 impossible days.
Why are ppl always so negative. It’s not been three since the PM made that statement..U all are just hoping he fails in all his endeavours…haters, wicked
Sunshine it’s called reality some people can just touch gold and turn it to crap.
Notes From A Native Son Of The Rock! “Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn’t fit in with the core belief.” ― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks!
Sunshine, the comment below was made before this article was posted! “Will LIAT rise like the Phoenix from the death blows landed by Covid and the ‘Cut Team’ in LIAT’s Southern Corner! This mere voice in the wilderness having passed on comments to ABLP operatives for transmittal to Executive politicos is most confident of flying the Friendly Skies over Antigua and Barbuda and the North East Caribbean! When a group of diverse English speaking Caribbean people is not intrinsically held together … , the consequences will be negative or sub-optimal! This occurs because each national member works towards different goals based on different value systems!” -JFII
Do the “Nattering Nabobs of Negativity” understand or have the clarity of Creative Visionary Strategic Thinking to live out our driving social philosophy, “Each Endeavouring, All Achieving” which embodies the idea that our worth depends on social, cultural and spiritual criteria, (of our obeah WoMen, religious sistren and rastafarian brethren) based on a life that depends on a normative engagement within the community, a substantive appreciation of the common good and a constitutive engagement with one another trying to build a rational and ethical community!
These are folks who do nothing to uplift and build but rip and tear at not only the socio-cultural fabric but every institution that is created to advance National Growth and Development and a Caribbean Civilization! With more than 350 LIAT direct jobs in Antigua and Barbuda and an equal amount of spin off jobs with dependant families and household one would have expected the “Pusillanimous Pu$$yfooters” and “Doubting Thomases” to be more charitable, empathetic and hopeful of their fellow citizens plight! Oh No! They would rather exhibit their callous self hatred, for themselves and each other, and “ethical Badmindedness” – as defined by Dr. Paget Henry, – an ethical discourse in which people are seen as acting out of bad motives rather than good ones: “acting out of spite, hate, acting with the intention to deceive, to dominate the other or to advance oneself at the expense of the other.” or Dr. Charles Ephraim’s “Ressentiment” – “an attempt to evade human reality through flights of misanthropy and other forms of bad faith …”
Local and other News Portals engage in a business model driven by qwerty clicks for revenue generation, hence the headlines, article content and comments are if not salacious, intended to drive controversy! They are not meant to engage in positive discussions on National Development, building solid Institutions and a Caribbean Civilization! Prudence dictates, with a small population of some 98K souls, of which 93K are People of African Descent, that commenters ought to provide Teachable Moments and Learning Opportunities to our Youth! Those who have the facts, must be above reproach so that when the “Nattering Nabobs of Negativity” and the “Pusillanimous Pu$$yfooters” enter into the “Chat Room,” superior arguments buttressed by facts, which they cannot counter or refute should be presented! Truth, like mighty waters rolling down the Nile, Victoria Falls or Kaieteur Falls or like the
Atlantic waves riding the North Equatorial Current all the way from West Africa, must be made to pound relentlessly on their brains as on the rocks at Devil’s Bridge!
Many of the “badminded” commenters filled with self-hatred could give nary a peep that, the audience is not only residing on Antigua and Barbuda, but also our Caribbean neighbours, Brothers and Sisters, People of African descent in the Diaspora and the Motherland and the rest of the World! Their negativity not only does damage, to the image which sustains the Tourism, Hospitality and Yachting Sector, the Nation’s economic driver, but also provides fodder for those who would describe the people united by common ethnic descent, history, culture, and language, as inhabiting a $hithole Country!
“The Africans and the underdeveloped peoples, contrary to what is commonly believed, are quick to build a social and political consciousness. The danger is that very often they reach the stage of social consciousness before reaching the national phase. In this case the underdeveloped countries’ violent calls for social justice are combined, paradoxically enough, with an often primitive tribalism. The underdeveloped peoples behave like a starving population—which means that the days of those who treat Africa as their playground are strictly numbered. In other words, their power cannot last forever. A bourgeoisie that has only nationalism to feed the people fails in its mission and inevitably gets tangled up in a series of trials and tribulations. If nationalism is not explained, enriched, and deepened, if it does not very quickly turn into a social and political consciousness, into humanism, then it leads to a dead end. A bourgeois leadership of the underdeveloped countries confines the national consciousness to a sterile formalism. Only the massive commitment by men and women to judicious and productive tasks gives form and substance to this consciousness.” ― Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth 1960!
Could and will are not interchangeable words…..
Liat should remain grounded until there is sufficient demand and not returned to the skies for ego boost or to meet a time line….
This would be the sensible approach.
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