– Seven countries cut due to COVID-19
– Carrier loses “significant market” in Guyana

REGIONAL carrier, LIAT, has been battling to stay afloat financially for years and its situation is likely to worsen with the impact of COVID-19 on the aviation industry.
The carrier, which was running on a reduced schedule and cancelled several flights in 2019, further suspended all flights into and out of seven Caribbean countries on Monday, March 23, 2020 as a result of the virus.

These countries are: Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Martinique, Guadeloupe, St. Maarten, Grenada and Tortola, B.V.I. In a release on its site, the carrier said that the decision was taken due to travel restrictions and border closures imposed by several countries.
Around the same time last year, LIAT announced that it was cancelling flights LI 374 from Barbados to St Lucia; LI 375 from St Lucia to Barbados; LI 337 from Barbados to Grenada; LI 338 from Grenada to Barbados; LI 769 from Barbados to St Vincent, and LI 770 from St Vincent to Barbados. That year LIAT’s CEO said that the airline “is in a challenging financial situation,” and that the airline has been flying through the region with support from its principal shareholders, those being the governments of Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Dominica.

In an interview with Barbados TODAY earlier this week, LIAT’s Corporate Communications Officer, Shavar Maloney said that the airline was taking a substantial hit as a result of the current travel restrictions.

“We have six markets with restrictions, one of which we had to pull out from completely, which is Guyana. We did three flights every day to Guyana. I would have to check finance to calculate the revenue loss, but Guyana is a significant market because the Guyanese diaspora is quite large. We have had restrictions from Trinidad, Guyana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, St Martin and Tortola. This is a trend that we might see continuing in the near future as this pandemic continues. All of the markets are inter-connected, and a 14-day restriction is quite significant for us,” Maloney said.

Chairman of LIAT, former Prime Minister of Barbados, Owen Arthur, who was recently in Guyana leading the Commonwealth Elections Observer Mission of the 2020 General and Regional Elections, declined to comment to the Regional media house until a meeting was had with the Board.

“I have just come back from Guyana, so I have not met with the board and I am not going to speak on behalf of LIAT until I meet with the board,” he said.

The company executives have been engaged in high-level meetings this week.
Banking and Finance Lecturer at the UWI Cave Hill Campus, Jeremy Stephen told Barbados TODAY about the commitment from Antigua to borrow US$15.8 million from Venezuela to purchase Barbados’ 49 per cent shares in LIAT.

Taking on a cautious optimistic outlook, he said: “A lot comes down to the management of the health crisis and the process is one that could certainly throw LIAT under the bus, but it all comes down to how long this crisis is going to last. One would expect that financially, LIAT would not be able to dig themselves out of this hole.”

Stephen pointed out that although the Regional carrier has been struggling for two decades, shareholder Governments have not taken a change in approach in dealing with the financial situation. With limited options due to the pandemic, he, like many others, is waiting to see what possible changes could take place. “This is a situation that has been going for 20 years where the shareholders prop up LIAT on one hand then tax it to death with the other hand. It has been an exercise in futility. LIAT was never meant to achieve scale. The point is that if this drags on for too long, I don’t think that LIAT has more than a month or two of working capital, based on my understanding of the financials. This time around I am not sure that regional Governments would be in a position to bail them out, even if they wanted to,” he said.