FRANKLY, I have employed extraordinary restraint in commenting on the subject of LIAT, because at the end of the day I feel that until the politics is completely taken out of the airline and it is operated in a purely commercial environment, then it has no long term future without massive taxpayer subsidies.
Our current breed of politicians simply do not have the testicular fortitude to put the long term sustainability of a truly regional airline over petty national policies.
This was perhaps best demonstrated when discussion took place about moving the carrier to a more logical and, equally important, viable operational base.
What changed my mind on offering an observation was a recent media release that bragged that “average load factors for the month of July [2015] were just under 76 per cent”. It went on to quote very impressive passenger traffic increases to Guyana (up 62 per cent) Tortola (up 32 per cent), Barbados (up 15 per cent), St. Maarten (up 15 per cent), and Antigua (up nine per cent).
This is very impressive and encouraging and I do not wish to take anything away from this achievement. However, what it does tell me is that there is still a great deal of opportunity with the nearly 25 per cent (or one in four) empty seats.
Without wanting to sound pompous, I cannot think of many other individuals who have plowed tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, into promoting
intra-Caribbean travel over the last four decades. Our re-DISCOVER The Caribbean Show, which operated for eight years, was a role model example for building this market, not just for tourism, but exhibiting enormous potential for helping to transform regional trade.
I cannot recall just how many times I have pointed out to senior LIAT management to carefully study the loads and see if there is any repetitive history to specific times and flight routes that regularly record lower numbers and offer a small percentage of the otherwise empty seats at lower prices.
What also defies logic is that our current administration attributes at least some of the increased United Kingdom visitor arrivals to the lowering of the dreaded air passenger duty for adults and exemption for children. But they do not seem to link the lowering of taxes on intra-regional travel as an incentive to stimulate intra-Caribbean tourism.
So with LIAT’s current “new fleet” of five ATR 42s and four ATR 72s they have an overall capacity of 522 seats daily for each sector flown. Based on each aircraft operating a minimum two rotations each day, which in reality is more likely to be eight flight segments, that means anything from 260 to more than 1 000 seats are being flown empty every single day of the year, based on the July figures. Surely, we can fill those seats through creative marketing and pricing.
One other area of concern is that it’s long overdue that the taxpayer is given a full explanation concerning the disposal of the older Dash 8 planes. Is the failure to sell the aircraft tied to the hangar fire and destruction of records? Do we have a right to know?
