LIAT Acknowledges Competition from Phoenix Airways

LIAT is acknowledging that newly launched Phoenix Airways represents competition for the regional airline. Barbados-based LIAT Chairman Jean Holder tells WINN FM that he is aware that the St Kitts-based Phoenix began flight operations on July 16.

“Every airline flying on the same route with LIAT is competition,” Holder said. “LIAT has never has far as I know, certainly on my level or level of a CEO sought to stop anybody one flying on the routes nor in fact can they. Everybody who comes on the route is competition,” Holder added. He said LIAT’s answer to competition is to become more competitive.

Phoenix Airways’ Chief Executive Officer, Neville Gumbs, has indicated that bookings are staggering in and that his airline flights have been on average about quarter full. LIAT Chairman Holder says he expects the new airline to face some of the hurdles that LIAT is being forced to grapple with, including taxes imposed by regional governments on airline tickets.

“Why I am not suggesting any great rebellion I am just saying that when people discuss ticket prices in LIAT, they should recognize a large part of the ticket price is taxes and goes not to LIAT but to the governments,” Holder said. He acknowledged that it is costly to run the airports in the region which explains the high taxes.

Mr. Holder agrees with former tourism minister of St Kitts and Nevis, Dwyer Astaphan, that some kind regional fund to help subsidize airlift should have been organized by now. The idea was to impose a levy on cruise ship passengers.

Holder said his attempts as then Head of the Caribbean Tourism Organization along with other interested parties to make this happen failed to materialize in the end. The LIAT Chairman says while the region has failed to capitalize on such initiatives, more advanced countries have not been shy about going that route.

He cites Britain’s Air Passenger Duty as one example.  “The British put on one hell of a tax and collected a huge amount of Pounds, millions, probably billions of Pounds for all kinds of purposes as far as I know, other than, the environmental purposes that were being suggested,” Holder said. “I know that the Unites States government has put a tax again on tourists for the express purpose of creating a Federal Tourism Fund.”  

However LIAT’s Holder acknowledges that the cruise lines would probably resist tooth and nail as they have done in the past, any Caribbean attempts to impose a levy on their passengers.

Source: West Indies News Network