Regional airline to cease operations in less than three weeks; workers to await pay

Almost 50 years after returning to the skies under the ownership of Caribbean governments, the 67-year-old island-hopper LIAT is to wind up in its current form –  LIAT (1974) Ltd – on January 24, its court-appointed administrator confirmed on Thursday.

More than 90 employees are to be sent home without any payment and a promise that obligations will be met. The news was conveyed in a letter signed by the administrator, Cleveland Seaforth, and dated Thursday, a copy of which was obtained by Barbados TODAY.

Despite shutting down and sending home staff, “a few” of the workers will remain to do some “tidying up” of the company as it now works towards readying its replacement, the proposed LIAT (2020) Limited, said one of the last remaining employees.

The notice closes yet another chapter in the storied life of the Eastern Caribbean’s oldest carrier, which was founded as Leeward Islands Air Transport in October 1956 by Kittitian airline captain Frank Delisle.

“After careful consideration and evaluation of the present operations, a decision has been taken by the court-appointed Administrator to permanently cease all commercial flying operations as of close of business on January 24, 2024,” said the letter by Seaforth who had been retained to run a scaled-down LIAT which collapsed in 2020, leaving hundreds jobless across the region.

“As a result of the foregoing, you are hereby notified that your employment with LIAT (1974) Limited (in administration) will be made redundant effective February 4, 2024.”

Seaforth told the staff the company was not in a position to make any severance payments at this stage, but declared that it would not be shying away from its obligations to them on severance, vacation pay, retroactive pay and any outstanding salaries.

“The company recognises its obligation as it relates to any of the [aforementioned] applicable entitlements, which will be provided to you under separate cover within 45 days of this letter after the respective computations have been completed,” the letter said.

“The payment of any indebtedness to you cannot be made at this time. However, every effort will be made by the Administrator to secure the best outcome in respect of the indebtedness to all employees in accordance with the company’s legal and contractual requirements.”

Seaforth thanked the workers for their “valuable contribution” to LIAT (1974) Limited which resumed flying operations on November 1, 2020, with a limited schedule at reduced capacities to return travel connectivity between the Caribbean territories and to maintain the LIAT brand and image.

Barbados-based LIAT engineer, Francis Ifill, who was one of those retained by the airline, welcomed the cessation of the company which was owned by the governments of Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, St Vincent and the Grenadines and Dominica.

Ifill, who was not among the other former Barbadian LIAT employees who benefitted from a severance payout of cash and bonds from the Mia Mottley administration last year, said he was looking forward to being eligible for a payment.

He told Barbados TODAY on Thursday evening:  “I am happy it has happened within my time frame…. I can now qualify for severance. It was a gallant thing they [airline] was trying to do, but I think it has long run its course. The writing was on the wall.

“It is now a matter of who will pay whose severance, when and how because the company has stated obviously, they don’t have any money now. So, my situation now would be that I can at least present this to the Government of Barbados and see if I would be given the treatment that all the other Barbados-based workers got.”

The former LIAT pilot who has been spearheading the fight for severance and other entitlements on behalf of his fellow Barbadian colleagues and other airline staff over the past three years, said that while they are grateful to the Mottley administration for receiving the cash component of its payout in July last year, the bonds element is still not forthcoming.

Captain Neil Cave told Barbados TODAY: “The promise and the understanding was that the bonds and full settlement of this nightmare would have taken place and the staff would have been issued these series J bonds for the severance portion, which actually is the larger portion of funds that are owed to the former LIAT staff of Barbados. There are a lot of calls coming in and a lot of requests now for communications to start again with the Ministry of Tourism and International Transport who has been handling the matter.”

He recalled being told last September that the bonds were being processed.

“A number of persons have reported that they have reached out and cannot get any more information,” Cave said. “We have no idea where the situation with the promised bonds stands right now. But as we approach the end of the financial year, we would have hoped that at least this would have been put to rest and that the staff here in Barbados would have been able to move forward.”

He said that as the ex-workers continued to negotiate with their creditors, having the bonds would have been rewarding.

“We just want to put this behind us once and for all,” he declared. “So, in the coming week, at the request of the remaining staff here in Barbados, I will reach out again to the ministry to ask for an update, and certainly respond to communications that would have been sent in.”

He noted that when the Antigua-based airline severed the staff in 2020, they were not even given their last month’s pay, vacation money or pay instead of notice.

“This is a tragedy that this has been allowed to happen like this considering the entity that LIAT was,” Cave said. “In most cases, with the exception of Barbados and Saint Lucia, people have been sent home and they cannot retrieve these monies. One could argue now that things are in a worse state than if this was done at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Caribbean countries were hard hit by the collapse of LIAT (1974) which entered into administration in July 2020 amid rising debt and the impact of the pandemic.

Antigua and Barbuda’s Prime Minister Gaston Browne that year declared that LIAT would be liquidated and reformed into a new carrier. Last year, his government entered into a deal with Air Peace to cede LIAT’s majority shareholding to the Nigerian carrier.

emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb