Gonsalves cools talk of regional airline

KINGSTOWN (CMC):

Caribbean aviation and transport ministers meet here today to discuss a wide range of outstanding matters including the possibility of establishing a single regional airline, Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves has said.

Gonsalves, speaking at a news conference, said that while his administration has no objection to the formation of a single airline to serve the 15-member Caribbean Community (CARICOM) region, such initiatives in the past have not borne fruit.

He said five or six years ago, then prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Patrick Manning, dissolved BWIA, formed Caribbean Airlines (CAL) and paid off all their debts.

But he said in 2011, CAL made a loss of US$44 million "and last year they made a loss in the sum of close to US$84 million".

Prime Minister Gonsalves has been critical of Port-of-Spain for providing a subsidy to CAL, which he said goes against the provisions of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas that governs CARICOM.

St Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, and Dominica are the major shareholders of the Antigua-based LIAT and Prime Minister Gonsalves said that upgrading the fleet would begin with the arrival of the first French-made ATR-72 aircraft by August.

Gonsalves told reporters that plans to develop the island's international airport were proceeding well and he hoped by May "we would have been a little further".

FURTHER ASSISTANCE

Gonsalves, who is due in Venezuela to attend a meeting of the Bolivarian Alliance of the People's of the Americas and PetroCaribe, said while he attended the inauguration of the new Venezuelan president, he held talks with Cuban President Raul Castro on the further assistance for the construction of the multimillion-dollar international airport.

"They are supposed to send for us a technical review team and to see what other sets of personnel of a skilled type we may need to assist in the acceleration of the process. But I want to assure the Vincentian public that the airport would be completed, and even if three or five months later, nobody is going to hang me for it," he told reporters.