KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent: Chairman of the Board of Directors of LIAT, Jean Holder on Tuesday made it clear that LIAT is not dead as he announced that the airline had received EC$44 million (US$11 million) from its shareholders to be used for restructuring the cash-strapped airline. He made the statement to regional journalists while addressing a press briefing in St. Vincent’s capital, Kingstown. Holder said that not only is LIAT not dead but it is part of the “life blood” of the region. Responding to a question from Caribbean Net News regarding whether the airline is terminally ill, as expressed by an individual close to a competing airline, LIAT’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Garry Cullen said one has to distinguish between a scientific analysis and wishful thinking. Putting LIAT’s financial position into perspective, LIAT’s Chairman Jean Holder has earlier said that the regional airline is under the microscope at a time when a number of international airline are declaring bankruptcy. He noted that some airlines have suffered losses totaling billions of dollars. He admitted that LIAT is being operated at a time when running an airline is becoming increasingly difficult. He said that in the next year or so a number of major airlines will disappear. On the issue of the once talked about BWIA-LIAT merger, Holder said that LIAT is in a similar position as a number of other carriers in the region, and merging two airlines that are both in difficulty will not necessarily make a very sound airline. He, however, cautioned that there should be no public assumption that the two airlines will not work together in some ways, since, according to him, functional cooperation is very important, and is the model that works best in the Caribbean. He however made it clear that regional carriers are desperately trying to keep themselves individually afloat before they could think of merging. He noted that air transport in the region, will be of vital importance whether or not the Caribbean Single Market and Economy comes into effect. He said that without air transportation in a group of islands such as the Caribbean, the residents are “imprisoned”. He therefore spoke of LIAT as a bridge linking together vital parts of the region. Chief Executive Officer of LIAT, Garry Cullen, said that the first phase of the critical refinancing of LIAT has just been completed. He said that immediately before the press conference, LIAT’s management was able to share with its Board of Directors the transformation plans for the company in terms of growing and developing over the next two years. According to him, LIAT had been constrained in kick-starting the plan because the company lacked funds for refinancing. He stressed that LIAT had been severely under capitalized for several years as it desperately tried to acquire the requisite funding from shareholders to restructure the company. He said that LIAT would work in partnership with the Caribbean Development Bank to acquire funding to implement the second phase, which would involve the expansion of the company including the purchase of additional aircrafts. Cullen said that the first phase of LIAT’s restructuring required a minimum amount of money to stabilize the company. He said that the EC$44 million the company received from its shareholders, which brings to a conclusion his demand of the past four years. He said that the retransformation plan is both radical and extremely challenging and entails creating a new airline from the ground up in terms of delivering first class service to all the airline’s existing customers and to new ones. Cullen said that LIAT has a very straight forward vision -- to empower everyone to fly within the Caribbean -- and a mission to deliver the highest quality in customer service as the airline provides reliable, low cost air travel. He said the Board meeting discussed a transformation plan for the company, which includes major investment in staff training and development, marketing and customer relations. He said the company is re-equipping its fleet. It will replace the existing Dash 8-100s with Dash 8-300s. Plan are in the pipeline to expand both the fleet and the route network from the end of this year. Cullen also said as a priority, the funds will be used in the stabilization process to deal with a lot of the outstanding debt as well as make changes in the organization. He said that LIAT’s management will with meet with the workers’ unions next week to go through the restructuring plan in detail. Reprinted from Caribbean Net News caribbeannetnews.com