Antigua, CMC (adapted) – The financially troubled regional airline, LIAT, says it has significantly improved upon its passenger numbers and revenue so far this year when compared to 2014.
The Antigua-based airline that is owned by the governments of Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Barbados and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, said that its average load factors for the month of July were just below 76 per cent. It is not certain this moment when Montserrat ceased being a shareholder of LIAT which was started in Montserrat some fifty or more years ago.
“Revenue per available seat mile, a key aviation performance indicator, has shown growth of 16 per cent in the past year. The airline’s positive performance has resulted in the best month for LIAT in recent years with a net profit declared in July 2015,” the airline said in a statement.
It said several of its routes showed “strong growth in both revenue and passenger numbers” and that of the 17 destinations it serves, Guyana, Tortola, Barbados, St Maarten and Antigua were the best performing destinations.
“The best performing route for LIAT was Barbados-Guyana which nearly doubled its revenue year on year, followed by Tortola-St Maarten which generated an additional 57 percent of revenue year on year.”
LIAT said that the new non-stop routes which were launched in mid-July are already developing well, with load factors on all routes averaging over 73 per cent, and showing positive trends.
“This steady performance is expected to continue over the rest of the Summer. The highest load factors were on the new Barbados-Trinidad and Barbados-Guyana nonstop services, achieving well over 80 percent, and the highest yielding route was Tortola-San Juan,” said the airline, adding that this strong performance has been coupled with a growth of eight per cent in daily aircraft utilisation, which is the measure of hours flown daily by LIAT’s ATR fleet
