LIAT facing $m losses

The pilots’ association – Leeward Islands Airline Pilots Association (LIALPA) – is claiming that the airline also lost millions when it was forced to sell its Dash Eight airplanes at reduced prices because all the paperwork on the planes was lost in a hangar fire which also destroyed an aircraft.

All this came to light last weekend when an interview with the Chairman of the Shareholder Governments, Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves of St Vincent and the Grenadines, appeared in the Barbados Today” newspaper.

The article quoted him as saying, “We have too many cancellations caused by illness of flight crew…we have too many bouts of illness which results in cancellations.” This reports comes two weeks after Antigua’s newspaper ‘The Observer’ issued a retraction of a statement purportedly made by LIAT’s acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Julie Reifer-Jones in which she allegedly said, “On record we have enough cabin crew to fly LIAT’s schedule. We have a high level of reported sickness from crew.” LIALPA refuted both statements as “erroneous and totally false”. The association said, “LIAT is woefully short of adequate crew to properly execute LIAT’s current flight schedule,” and further “any new crew member employed will not be able to fly during the upcoming hectic Christmas/New Year season.” The association said, “Flight cancellations are also occurring because LIAT has no reserve coverage on a daily basis and so a single pilot in a single island has to cover the operational model throughout the network.

This is ludicrous and represents poor planning and incompetent management.” LIALPA, in its release stated, “There is no abnormal sickness occurring among crew members.” Moreover, the association claims that LIAT has not hired a single pilot over the last two years, even though 31 pilots have left the company either through resignation or retirement. Of that total 19 were trained to fly the newly acquired ATR aircraft.

Further LIALPA accused management of sitting on its arms while “this mass attrition of ATR pilots occurred.” This has reportedly resulted in the company losing more money because it costs somewhere in the vicinity of $100,000 to train an ATR pilot, meaning the company would have spent just short of (EC)$2 million on the training exercise.

LIALPA said in a media release that the airline is now hurriedly hiring cockpit crews for the new upcoming winter schedule, but the association thinks it is too late because it takes between three and four months to train a pilot before he or she can actually fly with passengers.

The pilots’ association said its members “continue to reassure the travelling public, that we are committed and dedicated to serving you at the highest professional levels.” Continuing it said they wanted to avoid flight delays and cancellations, but simply cannot do so because of shortage of cockpit crews and poor working conditions.