Travelling through the Caribbean is getting easier thanks to a number improvements in the region, including a new airline that’s connecting more and more of the islands: Liat Air.
Hafsah Abdulsalam, CEO of Liat Air spoke at the Caribbean Tourism Organization’s State of the Industry Conference (SOTIC) in Barbados, and highlighted not only where they started, but where they want to be in the months ahead.
“Our core focus was to establish the much-needed connections, recognizing the only means to get from one place to the other,” Abdulsalam said. “We started flying on the 6th of August [2024] with just two destinations–which was Saint Lucia and St. Kitts–and within 12 months of operation, we started flying to 13 destinations, all the way to Jamaica in the north and Guyana in the south.”
“We literally touch most of the islands… [and] we are seeking to grow that network,” she said. “We’re also seeking to open up new point-to-point destinations that were not previously established [and] expand our business further, to Belize.”
Travelling through the Caribbean once meant that you had to fly to a major city–often outside of the Caribbean–and then book a connecting flight to the destination, but Liat is making travel quicker and easier.
Their destinations already include Barbados, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Maarten, and Trinidad, and soon, they will be adding more.
“We’re also seeking to open up two additional routes to Latin America. We’ve got [Cartagena] Colombia, that will be operating this year, and Dominican Republic before year-end as well. We also got some new connections for Q1 next year, but I’ll keep that under wraps for now.”
Growth next year will also mean new aircraft to help handle the expansion plans.
“For 2026 we’ll be introducing narrow-body aircraft,” she said. “We are also analyzing the introduction or addition of smaller aircraft, the 19-seater aircraft, to facilitate connectivity between the smaller tier routes so that we can provide that stretch. We say we are the pride of the Caribbean, and we want to be able to spread that pride across the Caribbean.”
Image courtesy of Liat Air.
