LIAT leaves travellers stranded

If you’re in, stay in and if you’re out, stay out!

That seems to be the situation facing a number of persons desirous of travelling to or from St Vincent and the Grenadines this month by way of the Leeward Island Air Transport (LIAT), the main airline that services this country.

Calls to the company’s reservations department, or a check of LIAT’s booking website www.liat.com, indicate that there are no flights available to leave or enter the country for at least the next two weeks.{{more}}

This situation is understandibly causing quite a bit of frustration for travellers, some of whom took to social media to express their displeasure.

A Vincentian living in Texas, USA, commented on Facebook, describing the travel issue as ridiculous.

“You know what is ridiculous? Not being able to get a LIAT flight in and out of St Vincent. Either Vincentians are travelling in droves and flights are booked solid going out to all the connecting hubs (things must be nice) or LIAT is not servicing that hub. Same thing happened in December,” said the aggravated man.

Kemron Bristol said, “this is irritating. I’ve never come across such. I just had to send a friend to Union Island to get to Grenada via SVG Air to take a flight to Trinidad… Well done”.

One of the more troubling comments came from Carro Cordice who offered, “I have a co-worker in Mustique scheduled for surgery in Trinidad next week, but cannot get a flight… I feel people in sh*t street better off than us right now….”.

Lloyd Carswell, the airline’s chief commercial officer told SEARCHLIGHT yesterday that the problem is that demand has outstripped availability.

“There hasn’t been a problem with flights; the schedule has been on sale since last October and virtually all services into and out of St Vincent have been full over the past few weeks. LIAT is currently operating a smaller fleet and it is just not possible to mount additional flights at this time outside of the normal schedule,” he said.

Commenting on passengers arriving at their destinations without baggage, Carswell said the baggage is sometimes left back for safety reasons.

“From time to time we experience high winds at the ET Joshua airport. In these circumstances, and for safety reasons, the airline will restrict the amount of baggage considered acceptable on a flight. On a handful of occasions over the past two weeks, the winds at ET Joshua have meant restrictions on our maximum take-off weight. This has resulted in a bags being held back to allow passengers to travel. Last weekend is the most recent example; however any bags that had to remain at ET Joshua were carried on Monday.”

In 2013, LIAT began a re-fleeting exercise to replace their Dash-8 aircraft with ATRs. While the last of the Dash-8 aircraft was sold last month, the company has not yet acquired all the replacement ATRs it had hoped to have, a usually reliable source, close to the situation, told SEARCHLIGHT.

Previously, the airline serviced its routes with 13 Dash-8s in all, some of which had been purchased, some leased.

At a press conference in February 2015, chair of the LIAT shareholder governments Dr Ralph Gonsalves said LIAT had taken delivery of eight new ATR planes: four ATR 72s and four ATR 42s.

To date, no additional aircraft have been purchased, although in March 2014 Gonsalves said a fifth ATR 72 is expected to be added to the fleet; however, there had been “no commitment on that yet.”

He also noted then that a fifth ATR 42 was also expected to come, but due to a delay in financing, it will be delivered in 2015.

Those two aircraft have not yet been added to the fleet.

“There is not that flexibility,” our source lamented.

According to our source, some of the shareholder governments who had pledged money for the refleeting exercise have not yet delivered on their promises.

Shares in LIAT are held by 11 Caribbean Governments, but the major shareholders are the Governments of Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Barbados and St Vincent and the Grenadines.