TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands Liat is bankrupt

Liat, which is a Caribbean airline doing flights in the Caribbean is going into bankruptcy. They hope to start up a leaner airline and continue flying. Not good for the region but not unexpected.
Probably also means Liat tickets have no value.

It’s great to hear the good news.
A useless airline with rude employees

Where did you read that? Nothing on their website and the inter webs has links about them potentially going bankrupt in March 2019....

thank you

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.

Have only flown LIAT a few times but the lack of professional management was evident in the poor website, late arrivals, and departures, and the cumbersome operational practices at EIS/LIAT desk.

Jim--is this a quote from you, or some other individual??

There was a rumour a while ago that Branson might take it over..wow Virgin airlines actually serving..the Virgins? I heard that he wanted to make massive changes to make it profitable if he did do that...has he registered Virgin Caribbean yet?

This is a news article in full, is exactly as I copied it and was not modified. I made the comment afterwards from 50 years in and around Caribbean aviation.

In LIAT specifically I was a pilot there for 16 years, and served on the executive of the Pilots Association as Secretary for 8 years. The mismanagement and waste by Board and management was nothing less than criminal, and the shareholder Chairman PM Ralph Gonsalves was the person most responsible for ensuring that LIAT was managed by appointees who did not have the qualifications, knowledge or experience to perform their functions.

The current CEO was previously a book keeper for a government-hotel in Barbados (Almond Resorts) and "persuaded" her friend - the now former Chairman of LIAT's Board - to make her the CFO. She has ZERO aviation qualifications, knowledge or experience to perform either role, as evidenced by LIAT's continued losses over the couple of years while she was in office, and I was told that (in an interview with another potential employer before she was appointed to LIAT) that she could not satisfy him that she even qualified for the accounting qualifications she presented.

So, it was a news article that you copied, despite copyright restrictions.. You are perfectly justified in posting YOUR impressions. Do NOT copy and paste news articles in full. A link is perfectly fine.

Mal--

that would be too perfect if you registered Virgin Caribbean--what a payback!!

He might be otherwise occupied https://www.theguardian.com/busines...-seeks-urgent-rescue-package-coronavirus

Same problems that all the airlines have - it's a tricky balance between ticket revenues and costs of fuel, leases, landing fees, people, and maintenance.

....and lots of leverage...

as Warren Buffett famously said, "only when the tide goes out can you see who is swimming naked"...