And Still I Rise

There was much drama on Wednesday as LIAT ground to a halt when all its pilots simultaneously came down with the same illness.The strike,"sick out" or whatever is the correct term was just another twist in the life of the embattled airline. The sickout is said to have stemmed from a LIAT proposed timeframe for disbursements which extended over too long a period plus outstanding payments due to pilots. Earlier this year we were greeted with the news that Barbados was now the biggest shareholder and that plans were afoot to restructure the airline to make it profitable.Now,as if to make a mockery of the situation a meeting in Barbados late Tuesday night which ended around midnight, apparently yielded the actions of the pilots.

As was to be expected there were scores of disgruntled passengers at the ET Joshua airport in St Vincent and most likely in the many airports around the region.Those persons who were booked to depart Trinidad following that island's carnival would have found themselves in quite a jam.Could you imagine if some persons had taken 2 sick days(aka unofficial leave)only to find themselves stuck in Trinidad indefinitely? They would have had some explaining to do to their supervisors.

Meantime, salary negotiations are set to commence soon and passengers can only hope that there won't be any more repeats of what transpired on Wednesday.As for me am so sick of lIAT and its general poor service that sometimes I wish they would just shut down for good.That would have saved the governments from continuously pumping money into a dying entity.Thankfully,for us in SVG who relied almost exclusively on LIAT there is now Caribbean Star complete with attractive fares to give us a little respite from LIAT woes.

# posted by Abeni @ 9:10 PM