Bridgetown.
Chairman of LIAT Jean Holder says the airline is vital to to air travel in the region. According to Holder, a casual glance at most departure at and arrival boards in the Caribbean would show that LAIT's services comprise the vast majority of operations.
"These services are essential, meaning that without them there would be a high level of paralysis of air travel in the region", says Jean Holder.
He noted that despite the challenges the airline has experienced it was the longest serving regional carrier.
The chairman told Trakker News that over the last 56 years 30 carriers had come and gone, some of them with a business plan based on the demise of LAIT.
He added that judging from annual losses reported globally, operating any airline was challengring but providing a Caribbean intra regional air service was fraught with difficulty, giving many aspects of its peculiar financial and operating environment.
Holder said there seemed to be a belief that LIAT had been exempt from the suffering caused by the poor state of the global economy and the extremely high cost of fuel maintenance and manpower.
"Perhap the reason for this is that through all these difficult times, LAIT has continued to deliver its extensive services, many of which are not commercially viable and amount to nothing more than apublic service.This cannot continue, especially when only three of the 21 destinations served by LIAT comes to its aid when it is in financial difficulty", he added.
