LIAT flights across the region should be back to normal today following a flight attendants sickout on Wednesday which caused a series of cancellations and affected hundreds of passengers.
Speaking with Stabroek News from her Antigua office yesterday, LIAT’s Communications Officer Penny Gomez said the airline was back on the road to recovery after 25 of its 30 cabin crew reported sick on Wednesday. This forced the airline to make accommodation arrangements for those passengers who were adversely affected.
“We are in the process of giving priority to those passengers who were affected and ensuring that they get flights out. We had to arrange for overnight places for some passengers to stay but today cabin crew have reported for duty,” Gomez said yesterday.
Quizzed as to what caused the industrial action, Gomez said the airline did not have a clear position on the reason for the apparent sickout by the flight attendants and other cabin crew, but that this should be ascertained over the next few days.
Gomez said the airline was not yet in a position to be able to measure the financial impact of the sickout. Large sums have been expended on ensuring that passengers were properly accommodated as the airline struggled to regularise its operations.
LIAT Airport Manager at the Cheddi Jagan International Orin Walton was unable to give an official comment on the situation. However, he told this newspaper that flights coming in were being affected by extensive delays though the Guyana side was not affected “that much”.
He said alternative travel arrangements had to be put in place for about six passengers who were scheduled to leave on a flight that was cancelled on Wednesday night.
Two flights scheduled to arrive yesterday were more than two hours late, an airport source told Stabroek News, since the action posed a severe backlog in flights.
Antiguan reports said the industrial action grounded 34 of the island-hopping carrier’s 120 flights.
The Antigua Sun reported that flight attendants were upset that they had not yet received monies owed to them by the airline and their frustration worsened when they found out that contracted flight attendants were receiving higher wages.
That newspaper quoted the airline’s management as saying that the sickout appeared to be collective action by the Leeward Islands Flight Attendants Association, but said it was made clear long before that contracted crews were always paid higher than permanent staff.
It also quoted LIAT CEO Mark Darby as saying, “It cannot be a co-incidence that 25 people all called in sick one day. That number represents almost half of the total flight attendant population.”
The Sun said Darby pleaded with the flight attendants to return to their scheduled duties, adding that the action caught management by surprise.
Darby also tried to make contact with the flight attendants association, which, he said, knew nothing about the action.
The article quoted Darby as saying that as far as management was concerned, there was nothing that should have provoked the action.
The airline has since put some bookings on hold and has established two hotlines: 1-888-844-5428 and 1-268-480-5528 for persons calling out of Antigua.
