Saturday, December 17, 2011

Cooking Liat’s Goose

..........................
Posted by at

7 comments:

U F O. said...

LIVE IT AT THAT,LOL?

LIAT?????????

December 17, 2011 at 2:54 PM
Anonymous said...

Nothing is the Governments in the region's business until it reach crisis. The Governments of the region only have themselves to blame. All of this mess with LIAT happened as a result of insularity and greed. Ralph Gonsalves has single handedly shot down any attempt by other airlines to introduce competition in the airline industry. I was shocked at his statement durning the week about "scraping LIAT and replacing it with another entity"WOW oh what a tangle web we weive when we first practice to deceive". There is a little something they call KARMA..... well its coming right back to bite the regional govts. St Kitts is dead freaking broke; Antigua is still struggling under the austerity measures imposed by the IMF; Barbados's economy is on the downturn; Saint Lucia just came from an election and the state of the economy is not even known as yet;Dominica is struggling; St Vincent is broke as well.... and the rest are going to hell in a basket. WHO will invest in LIAT at this time? NO COUNTRY WILL. At this juncture CAL along with RedJet should seize this opportunity to bring regional travel to world class and dump öle Liat". I knew this crap could not be allowed to continue......LIAT's MONOPOLY MUST END!!!

December 17, 2011 at 9:22 PM
Anonymous said...

Antigua is the country bleeding LIAT with their heavy useless top heavy management; No wonder Lester Bird cries foul.......no more Allen Stanford to bail Antigua out of their economic mess. The Antiguan governemnt has killed LIAT along with Ralph Gonsalves of St Vincent. I am not sorry. Let the tourists see the small islands for what they represent "small". Myopic vision

December 17, 2011 at 9:26 PM
Anonymous said...

To add a note of reality here, the pilots are not so much cooking LIAT's goose as standing up for their rights. And by their ham-fisted action management have blown a minor infraction, which should merely be a matter of discipline, into a full-blown industrial action - which is now supported by other large unions in Antigua.

LIALPA has negotiated a contract for over ten years (for the third time in 40 years), and LIAT management has decided to lay their own contrary interpretation on the terms of the arbitration decision.

There have recently been calls for the examination of the LIAT Board and management from several quarters, but the shareholder governments seem to have their heads firmly buried in the sand - or elsewhere - and the same blundering meandering neanderthals continue to stumble their way into the future.

Reference CAL's proposed "takeover' of LIAT's skies, CAL has one, perhaps two ATRs flying of the nine ordered, and they are also serving the Tobago Airbridge. The next ATR arrives next year, with deliveries one a month until all nine are delivered. Of those nine, at least four are destined for Jamaica. CAL has apparently ordered another twenty, but they will not see any of those for at least a year, possibly two.

And at the rate Chairman George Nicholas is spending the taxpayer's money (all the while telling them it is not taxpayer's money) CAL will be bankrupt by the time the last of the first nine ATR arrives.

I say this because between George Nicholas and Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar the CAL shopping list has already passed the US$ 3 Billion mark (about TT$ 18 Billion), with announcements of further planned spending forthcoming almost daily. Apart from politically-motivated routes to South Africa and India (and further), the latest plan is for three 767 aircraft solely for cargo - in addition to the four 777 aircraft for the long range routes (which will then be replaced by four new 787 aircraft).

Compared to the prior careful and planned revival of the airline as CAL, its current volcanic expansion seems ill-advised, badly planned and unregulated, as if the announcements of future purchases and expansions follow someone's wet aviation dreams of the night before. This is the way observers see airlines behave just before they self-destruct in an orgy of losses.

To make matters worse, Nicholas is not the CEO but the Chairman, yet he appears to be performing the day-to-day running the company. Nicholas also has no solid business management foundation or experience, and no experience in the highly technical - and risky - business of aviation. And his behaviour suggests not a competent man of business but a volatile teenager more interested pouting and in his toys than the Billions of (taxpayer) dollars he is on the verge of wasting.

Trinidad and CAL seems to have become a bigger Caribbean bully than they were before Patrick Manning was so soundly beaten at the polls. I have never seen anyone threaten to destroy LIAT such such determination and intent to do so with such demonstrations of ego and bravado. Experts have suggested that T&T oil and gas will run out within 20 years, yet here is an orgy of spending never seen before, even in Trinidad.

LIAT has its problems, nobody can deny that. But in any company you can only fire so many of the people who do the work. At some point the owners will have to drag their heads out of the sand (or wherever) and ask the question "If it is not with the employees, then where does the problem really lie?", and the sooner that day arrives the sooner LIAT will do the job it was supposed to be doing, and at the barest minimum breaking even.

With all this in mind, I'd like to see LIAT's shareholders spend some time working on correcting LIAT's Board and management problems and incompetence, then perhaps we may be able to return to a semblance of sanity and normality in Caribbean aviation.

December 18, 2011 at 8:58 AM
Anonymous said...

I grew up hearing and seeing specifically LIAT planes, as i don't live far from the airport, i marvel each and every time i see an airplane as i had intentions on becoming a pilot. I visited Barbados twice travelling on LIAT which was quite an experience as i am scared to death of heights.(also a reason not to become a pilot). LIAT already has competition and if they don't buckle up their seat belt and arrive at a suitable decision,Red jet will be taking over soon.

December 18, 2011 at 2:00 PM
Better Days Ahead said...

to be fare and balance LIAT HAS DONE THE CARIBBEAN VERY WELL.. esp in 60s,onwards where they were basically the sole airline. but there comes a time when companies are hemmoraging from inside and that is LIAT , its been that way for a couple decades now, and no gov shareholder is willing to tackle that issue with their huge management in antigua who doesnt have the respect of staff in the islands. antigua has alot to play in the demise of liat, the airline in my opinion has to be revamped or just call it a day, perhaps incoming CAL , REDJECT, AIR CANADA can absorb some employees of LIAT. To hold the region hostage for a few hundred staffs is ridiculous LIAT is a crippling airline and its poor service and constant delays and noisy airplanes come on how long can the public put up with that.. ARE WE AWARE AS A REGION HOW MANY AIRLINE COMPANIES WHEN DOWN UNDER IN THIS 4 YR RECESSION.. THANKFULLY THERE SEEMS TO BE INTERESTED INVESTORS TO REPLACE LIAT .. WE THANK LIAT BUT THERE COMES A TIME FOR CHANGE ..YES WE CAN ..RIGHT??

December 19, 2011 at 4:17 PM
Anonymous said...

Put Liat into receivership. Get a new company formed. Hire new workers under new contracts.

Existing contracts are too generous. They belong to the 2oth century.

Change the management structure and the configuration of operations. Too much governmental and political sway in what should operate on business principles rather than the political fortunes of prime ministers.

December 22, 2011 at 10:55 AM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)