Grenada is working with other Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and Caribbean Community (Caricom) member states to establish a framework for a new regional airline, says Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell.
“We are working with other islands in the OECS and Caricom to try and come up with a framework that will allow us […] to look at, work at, or be a partner with, or maybe part owning an airline that will service the region,” he told an online meeting, disclosing he may have abandoned earlier ideals of Grenada leasing or owning its own aircraft as part of measures to improve regional travel, reports the Antigua Tribune.
In December, the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) approved a technical assistance grant to finance consultancy services which are devising urgent provisional measures to re-establish regular flights in the sub-region.
This followed a request from the governments of Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados, Grenada, Guyana, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent & the Grenadines for assistance in addressing the need for more airlift capacity in the region after LIAT (Antigua and Barbuda) (Antigua) - the main intra-island air carrier in the Eastern Caribbean - severely curtailed its services after it entered administration in Antigua and Barbuda in July 2020.
Mitchell – who has been in the job for just over six months – said Grenada was prepared to subsidise regional flights, “but you have to find airlines, you actually have to find the aeroplanes, and you have to find or rebuild a regional carrier,” he said in an online meeting this week.
“It requires cooperation from all in the region because you can’t just fly between Grenada and Carriacou; you have to fly Barbados and St Vincent. You need all of the islands to take part; all of the islands have to be prepared to give the airline’s operator the rights to fly into their country, and if you don’t have those things in place, it will not work,” he said.
