ST JOHN’S, Antigua (CMC) – Prime Minister Gaston Browne says no decision has been taken regarding the re-location of the Antigua-based cash-strapped regional airline, LIAT, to Barbados.

He said the Barbados Minister of Tourism and International Transport, Richard Sealy, may have been “misinformed or he spoke out of turn”  if he is the source of a report that a decision had been taken on the matter.

“I know that Minister Sealy suggested that a decision has been taken to move LIAT’s headquarters, but that is not so. Perhaps he is either misinformed or he spoke out of turn, but the reality is there has been absolutely no discussions about moving LIAT’s headquarters,” Browne is quoted in the Wednesday edition of the Antigua Observer newspaper.

LIAT’s main shareholders are the governments of Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, and St Vincent and the Grenadines and there have been speculation in the past that a shift in the airline’s headquarters would make much more sense financially for the airline that is grappling with its finances.

Browne is quoted as saying that any plans to shift the airline headquarters will be strongly resisted by his administration and announced plans to increase the island’s shares in the regional airline.

“We hope to make another payment shortly and we have been making payments but as you know, we have a number of pressing issues. We inherited a country – an economy that was not the healthiest and I am being very mild, but as soon as practicable we will make another equity injection into LIAT,” Browne said.

Antigua and Barbuda is the second largest shareholder in the company, with Barbados holding the majority of the shares.

Meanwhile, a member of the board of directors of the airline, Lennox Weston, is blaming pilots for contributing to the company’s financial woes.

“Our pilots at LIAT get sick a lot more often than pilots of other airlines and so we have had a lot of cancellations and delays because of sickness,” he said on a radio programme here.

“In the airline industry if you wake up and mentally you are not in the mood to fly, you can’t fly… and so we have had a tremendous amount of cancellations because of the abnormally high rate of sickness among the pilots.”

But the former chairman of the Leeward Islands Pilots Association, Captain Carl Burke challenged the position adopted by Weston saying he has a 100 per cent attendance for 2016.

“I have personally gone on our email chain, I have explained to the pilots that the company and the board is building a case against the pilots trying to set us up saying we are causing the company to fail,” Burke said, noting that there were many other reasons for pilots to be sick.

“What would cause the sickness, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction,” he said, noting that pilots were spending more time at work than with their families.