Minister for Tourism & Civil Aviation, Dr the Hon. Clarice Modeste-Curwen MP, has announced the restoration of the daily early-morning LIAT service to Barbados.
LIAT withdrew this and another service in late 2016, prompting local officials to seek alternatives while negotiating with LIAT for restoration. This decision to restore the flight follows a visit to Grenada by LIAT top-ranking executives at the invitation of the Minister’s Advisory Committee on Airlift for discussions early in February this year.
The service resumes on 15 June and is already available for sale on LIAT’s website. Minister Modeste-Curwen added that LIAT will also be introducing a new flight to Grenada in what is known as a point-to-point service (Barbados–Grenada–Barbados). “This new service will also commence on 15 June and will operate 4 days a week, arriving from Barbados mid-morning, and departing Grenada just before noon for Barbados,” confirmed the Minister.
Chairman of the Airlift Committee, Richard Strachan, indicated that LIAT was represented at the February meeting by Acting CEO Julie Reifer-Jones, Chief Commercial Officer Lloyd Carswell and Manager of Scheduling, Jabari Jemmot. “LIAT has assured us of their new vision in doing business with Grenada by ensuring same day connectivity both ways. They will change the aircraft type to the larger ATR72, thereby providing an additional 40 seats daily (BGI-GND-POS) on one of the services,” Strachan said. He also stated that the new schedule will significantly increase the number of available seats to Grenada weekly by over 4,000, representing a 60% increase.
Marketing Manager at the Grenada Tourism Authority (GTA), Francine Stewart, welcomes the new schedule, noting that the top 2 regional markets for Grenada in the last 2 years have been Barbados and Trinidad & Tobago both ways. She said, “this new schedule of service parallels nicely with our needs and we have already started working with LIAT’s marketing team to not only market the new flights, but to fulfil the additional capacity we are now going to benefit from.”
GTA