LIAT to be liquidated and new airline formed – PM Gaston Browne

https://barbadostoday.bb/2020/06/27...-be-liquidated-pm-browne/#comment-676785

LIAT to be liquidated and new airline formed – PM Gaston Browne
June 27, 2020

From a long time aviation professional...

1. For **_DECADES_** LIAT has been mismanaged from the very top - shareholder chairman down to top management - by political appointees and friends of the Board. Antigua had its share of political appointees, but no appointee from ANY country has ever been competent for a Board or top management position.

2. Barbadians cry out for LIAT to be based there, but on a practical note there are THREE very good reasons why Barbados should NOT be the new airline's Head Office -
- a) Between overwhelming Bajan bureaucracy and local taxes the airline would NOT be profitable and would recede back into today's "begging" model
- b) With Barbados having its own currency - and with its overwhelming ever-braking time-wasting bureaucracy - the new airline would ALWAYS have a problem sending and receiving money overseas for the range of transactions which every airline MUST have
- c) Barbados does not have an independent CAA, and due to political lack of interest (and resignations by Officers in disgust) its CAD is unqualified, incompetent and unable to oversee the few small aircraft it has on the registry now. Excessive stupidity (or political instructions) made the BCAD accept a Boeing 747 on its registry - even though the BCAD does not have the personnel or qualifications to approve maintenance on just its nose wheel alone.

3. However you may feel about Antigua, it is the one place where most of the facilities already exist and where an airline of this size can operate without the usual political and bureaucratic harassment. To recreate that somewhere else (hangars, offices, infrastructure) would be a load of some US$30 million on the new owners. Not to mention the hardship in resettlement of all the licenced professionals (half of the company - pilots, engineers) who would have to relocate

4. The fault of the crash of LIAT lies not in COVID or in the people of the Caribbean whose hundreds of millions in taxes have supported it, it lies in the politicians who have for almost 50 years steadfastly refused to make LIAT into a commercial entity. In particular in Marxist Dictator Comrade Fat Ralph "Ganja Man" Gonsalves who has made sure for the last 15 years that the taxpayer supported the airline in increasingly greater costs, and that no qualified or competent person sat on the Board or in executive management positions. Even now, there is not a single person on the Board who really understands aviation, far less airlines.

Dictator Comrade Fat Ralph "Ganja Man" now has Argyle, SVG Air and One Caribbean on site, and no longer needs LIAT. Why he has not been rotated out as Chairman, as all regional leaders are, is a complete mystery, and smacks deeply of political corruption.


Maybe it is time for LIAT to go. But what may replace it - Caribbean Airlines - may be worse for the rest of us. Trinidadian politicians and CAL management have already made it crystal clear that any routes they fly MUST make money, so whether they get sweetheart seat subsidies or they charge excessive fares - or even operate the routes you want to fly at all - will be a Trinidadian decision which has nothing whatsoever to do with our needs. So if you think CAL is the solution to our problems, wheel and come again.

Jim--there is no reason to copy and paste a whole story, when you paste a link to it. And the story obviously is copyrighted.

Jim--who is the "long time aviation professional"?? Is it you? Because if not, would be interested to hear where this is from and whether it is a quote from another copyrighted publication.

Is news copyrighted? I don't think so... not in our part if the world, anyway. If public news sources want to copyright their articles then they should require subscriptions and shut their damned publications to public view. So if you don't want to read it, then don't.

And yes, I am that aviation professional, those are my views and experiences, also whether you like the truth or not.

Uhmn, yes, news articles are copyrighted. Period.

If the views are YOURS, no problem. If you are posting YOUR opinions, no problem.