'LIAT is not dead' says airline's Chairman
LIAT’s Chairman Jean Holder, CEO Garry Cullen and other representatives of
LIAT at Tuesday’s press briefing. Photo: Kenton Chance
Thursday, February 10, 2005
KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent: Chairman of the
Board of Directors of LIAT, Jean Holder on Tuesday made it clear that LIAT is
not dead as he announced that the airline had received EC$44 million (US$11
million) from its shareholders to be used for restructuring the cash-strapped
airline. He made the statement to regional
journalists while addressing a press briefing in St. Vincent’s capital,
Kingstown.
Holder said that not only is LIAT not dead
but it is part of the “life blood” of the region.
Responding to a question from Caribbean Net News regarding whether the
airline is terminally ill, as expressed by an individual close to a competing
airline, LIAT’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Garry Cullen said one has to
distinguish between a scientific analysis and wishful thinking.
Putting LIAT’s financial position into
perspective, LIAT’s Chairman Jean Holder has earlier said that the regional
airline is under the microscope at a time when a number of international
airline are declaring bankruptcy. He noted that some airlines have suffered
losses totaling billions of dollars. He
admitted that LIAT is being operated at a time when running an airline is
becoming increasingly difficult. He said that in the next year or so a number
of major airlines will disappear.
On the issue of the once talked about
BWIA-LIAT merger, Holder said that LIAT is in a similar position as a number
of other carriers in the region, and merging two airlines that are both in
difficulty will not necessarily make a very sound airline.
He, however, cautioned that there should be no public assumption that the two
airlines will not work together in some ways, since, according to him,
functional cooperation is very important, and is the model that works best in
the Caribbean. He however made it clear that
regional carriers are desperately trying to keep themselves individually
afloat before they could think of merging. He
noted that air transport in the region, will be of vital importance whether or
not the Caribbean Single Market and Economy comes into effect.
He said that without air transportation in a group of islands such as the
Caribbean, the residents are “imprisoned”.
He therefore spoke of LIAT as a bridge
linking together vital parts of the region.
Chief Executive Officer of LIAT, Garry
Cullen, said that the first phase of the critical refinancing of LIAT has just
been completed. He said that immediately before the press conference, LIAT’s
management was able to share with its Board of Directors the transformation
plans for the company in terms of growing and developing over the next two
years. According to him, LIAT had been
constrained in kick-starting the plan because the company lacked funds for
refinancing. He stressed that LIAT had been severely under capitalized for
several years as it desperately tried to acquire the requisite funding from
shareholders to restructure the company. He
said that LIAT would work in partnership with the Caribbean Development Bank
to acquire funding to implement the second phase, which would involve the
expansion of the company including the purchase of additional aircrafts.
Cullen said that the first phase of LIAT’s restructuring required a minimum
amount of money to stabilize the company. He said that the EC$44 million the
company received from its shareholders, which brings to a conclusion his
demand of the past four years. He said that
the retransformation plan is both radical and extremely challenging and
entails creating a new airline from the ground up in terms of delivering first
class service to all the airline’s existing customers and to new ones.
Cullen said that LIAT has a very straight forward vision -- to empower
everyone to fly within the Caribbean -- and a mission to deliver the highest
quality in customer service as the airline provides reliable, low cost air
travel. He said the Board meeting discussed a
transformation plan for the company, which includes major investment in staff
training and development, marketing and customer relations.
He said the company is re-equipping its fleet. It will replace the existing
Dash 8-100s with Dash 8-300s. Plan are in the pipeline to expand both the
fleet and the route network from the end of this year.
Cullen also said as a priority, the funds will be used in the stabilization
process to deal with a lot of the outstanding debt as well as make changes in
the organization. He said that LIAT’s management will with meet with the
workers’ unions next week to go through the restructuring plan in detail.
Back...
Most popular
articles: viewed, printed and e-mailed
Printable
version
| 
