PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad – My old friend Jean Holder, chairman of LIAT, recently presented to the airline's major shareholder prime ministers a paper titled “Towards a sustainable regional air transportation service”.
Those who have read his extraordinarily informative 2010 book Don't burn our bridges: the case for owning airlines will not be surprised by the theses in his paper. Among other things, he speaks of costs and subsidies, the need for cooperation among government-owned carriers, the fragility of the “privatisation” and “competition” arguments in the Caribbean context, especially given what he calls “over-capacity and under-demand” on certain routes, etc. (But we don't learn, do we. Still mindlessly importing dimly-understood Reaganomic and Thatcherite theories about “the magic of the marketplace”, and eschewing the imperative of proper planning, we have seen the collapse and death of private sector airline after private sector airline, whose warning bones untidily litter the Caribbean aviation landscape; REDjet and EZjet are only the latest skeletons. But we remain unwarned.)
Holder recommends that “a special meeting of Caricom Heads of Government be convened early in 2013 to discuss regional air transportation and its critical role in supporting the Caribbean Single Market and Economy.” Also, a committee should be established “to examine the feasibility of (Caricom airline alliances)”. Deliberations on these matters should take place “with regard to the articles of the Caricom Multilateral (Air Services) Agreement”.
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