Grenada To Feel The Pinch As LIAT Cuts Sectors

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Sep 17 2016 – Grenada, the latest country to call out LIAT for its appallingly low customer service, will be the first one to suffer as a result of a route restructuring exercise announced by the airline.

Acting Chief Executive Officer Julie Reifer-Jones announced the planned changes during a press conference at the Hilton Hotel on Thursday on the heels of discussions with the Government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines

The airline’s management team had been summoned to Kingstown for talks with the Dr. Ralph Gonsalves administration after Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of National Security Godfrey Pompey told them in a strongly worded letter that LIAT needs to get its act and attitude towards the travelling public of St. Vincent and the Grenadines together.

“We have given the Government of St. Vincent certain assurances including an assurance that we will arrive in St. Vincent within the timeframe that has been established by the airport. That has implications but we have given assurances that we will adjust the schedule to take that into account,” Reifer-Jones said.

“What it means is that we have to cut some of the sectors that we are presently doing on that rotation and that will be implemented hopefully in the next two weeks.”

When pressed about which countries would be affected by the schedule change, Reifer-Jones said “the rotation that was creating the largest difficulty for St. Vincent, goes from St. Vincent in the night to Port of Spain to Grenada and then back to St. Vincent”.

She explained that the aircraft goes back to St. Vincent to operate and early morning flight the next day.

“In that rotation we are trying to serve both St. Vincent and Grenada and Port of Spain. We have reviewed the traffic on the route and determined that the adjustment that we will do is the Grenada-St. Vincent route.”

A mere 24 hours earlier, Grenada’s Tourism Minister Clarice Modeste had severely criticised LIAT complaining that she had a total of three hours delay while travelling on official government business recently.

Reifer-Jones said cutting Grenada from the rotating would allow LIAT to get into St. Vincent earlier in order to meet the time restrictions at the E.T. Joshua Airport.

Meantime, the Acting CEO said there are other steps being taken in a bid to improve efficiency at the airline, including the acquisition of more aircraft.

“We have nine aircraft now and there is a 10th aircraft that should arrive at the end of October. The 10 aircraft we have identified for our core network and in our plans there is a strategy that would include two additional aircraft at a later date,” she said.

“We are still to work out the details of the timing of that but that’s our thinking and certainly based on the challenges which we are having now, the limited number of aircraft that we have presents challenges to our ability to serve the region. So I think that we want to look at that plan and see how soon we can activate that addition to the fleet.”

As it relates to internal efficiencies at the airline, Reifer-Jones admitted that management has been very slow in the changes in the technology that supports the carrier’s operations.

“Airlines are very technology driven. Our reservation system is functional but old. We are in the process of doing a review of that system but I can also tell you that we are looking at our internal systems – our financial accounting system, our maintenance system and the company has earmarked some investment to begin that process by the end of this year.

“So for 2017 we hope to see some significant changes in terms of the internal organisation and management. It’s been late in coming but airlines are very capital intensive and the focus of the shareholders up to this point has been to try to find the financing to change the fleet which we have more or less completed. So the shift in focus at this point is on those areas that would help us to improve on our operations; and that investment in the technology is part of that change,” she added.