shareholders agrees LIAT cannot survive without restructuring plan by CDB

The shareholders of the Leeward Island Air Transport (LIAT) have agreed that the airline is at the crossroads and it cannot survive without the restructuring plan designed by the Caribbean Development Bank.

The shareholder governments held an emergency meeting in St. Vincent over the weekend to formulate ways to further assist the struggling airline.

The CDB-funded study of the cash-strapped carrier, which was completed in mid-2018 and presented to shareholder governments, outlined the airline’s challenges and opportunities, and put forward a series of recommendations.

Among the pending changes are the implementation of an employee performance index to help determine promotion and pay increases, possibly a new funding model.

The major shareholders in the airline are Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica and St Vincent and the Grenadines.

The CDB-funded analysis looked at the airline’s performance, its challenges and some possible solutions and opportunities.

The study found a number of weaknesses within LIAT’s human resource functions, specifically low productivity and performance.

It also found that the airline was encountering problems in transferring passengers from one aircraft to their connection.

The most startling of the findings, was that the airline used to transport somewhere in the region of 1.2 million people per year, but was only now carrying between approximately 720,000 and 730,000 passengers.

When shareholders met, a decision was taken by each member country to implement the recommendations which, if delayed, could result in the death of LIAT.