The Caribbean transport company LIAT, founded in 1956, is to be dissolved in its current form – LIAT (1974) Ltd – on January 24, 2024, confirmed Cleveland Seaforth, its administrator appointed by the Administrative Court of Antigua and Barbuda, Thursday 4 last January.
According to the daily Barbados Today, this letter sent to LIAT employees confirms the cessation of activities of the company which only owned one plane, the other planes had been seized to settle the company's debts. 90 employees will therefore be made redundant as of February 4, 2024, without compensation even if the company intends to inform the people concerned of a possible change within 45 days depending on the results of the financial analysis. Only a few employees will remain professionally active upon the definitive closure of the company. The government of Antigua and Barbuda is nevertheless working on the launch of a new entity LIAT (2020) whose opening date has not been communicated and which will not be responsible for the debts of LIAT (1974). “After careful review and evaluation of current operations, the court-appointed administrator has decided to permanently cease all commercial flight operations effective at the close of business on January 24, 2024,” states the letter from Seaforth retained for running a scaled-down LIAT after it collapsed in 2020, leaving hundreds of people jobless in the region. As a reminder, the Covid crisis of 2020 accelerated the fall of the already heavily indebted LIAT. Overnight, as with many companies and particularly airlines, operations ceased, leading to the unemployment of hundreds of agents without notice or payment of final salary and paid leave. In June of the same year and following the refusal of the other shareholder states (Barbados, Dominica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines) to continue financing the carrier in debt, Gaston Browne, the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, majority shareholder country of the company, announced the liquidation of LIAT. In 2023, the government of Antigua and Barbuda entered into an agreement with Air Peace to transfer the majority stake in LIAT to the Nigerian carrier. _VX
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