BWIA/LIAT finally join forces By Ian Gooding in Barbados (Trinidad Newsday) After years of talking about it and several attempts to do it, BWIA West Indies Airways and LIAT (1974) Ltd have finally signed an agreement to forge a "deep and lasting alliance". The announcement of the "engagement" came yesterday at a joint media conference held at the Savannah Hotel in Barbados, attended by BWIA president and CEO Conrad Aleong, LIAT's Irish CEO Garry Cullen, senior personnel of both airlines and members of the regional media. The agreement which takes effect on March 1, following the code sharing agreement to be signed later this month, will provide immediate benefits to customers of both airlines and an improvement of the bottom lines of the two longest serving regional carriers, with BWIA around for 60 years and LIAT 40. The most immediate benefit for passengers will be seamless travel through the Caribbean, from North America up to England. Already this seamless travel has been worked out and passengers will be able to fly from any one of the islands serviced by LIAT and be sure of making their connection with a BWIA flight to continue to America, Canada or the UK, without worrying about their luggage. This had not been happening before. Later on as the logistics are worked out, BWIA and LIAT will be marketed as one airline in all their destinations. This will give the LIAT name a presence in all BWIA destinations. The competition for the same routes between the two carriers will now be avoided and, by flying at different times, the airlines will give passengers more choices in when to travel. "Having LIAT operating into the islands and connecting to BWIA, will allow us to take the resources we would have been using to compete with LIAT and deploy them elsewhere, thus enlarging the pie for both of us," said Aleong. "We are very excited about this alliance since it will give us the opportunity to serve the people of the region much better and reduce our cost by joint purchasing and sharing of many services and in many other areas. "We have both taken steps to cut cost so we will be ready when the upturn begins in about two years," said Aleong. Cullen of LIAT said that the frequent changing of CEOs of both airlines forestalled earlier attempts to form such an alliance. But the imperatives of survival after September 11 seemed to have forced the move to get together. The owner of Roger's Trinbago Site: Roj (Roger James) *************************************************** Trinbago site: http://www.tntisland.com ICQ: ICQ # 15836110 ICQ Pager: mailto:15836110@pager.icq.com escape email #!1 mailto:ejames@escape.ca yahoo email #2: mailto:triniroj@yahoo.com Yahoo Pager: triniroj Caribbean Brass & Soca Connection Group on Yahoo: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/caribsocabrass Caribbean Brass & Soca Connection Club Website http://www.tntisland.com/caribbeansocabrassconnection/ ******************************************************* Steel Expressions Orch http://www.escape.ca/~ejames/se/ email #1: mailto:steelexpressions@yahoo.com email #2: mailto:steelexpressions@home.com ******************************************************* The Trinbago Site of the Week: (Traffik) http://www.cariwaksoca.com/trafik.htm (Caribbean Traffik Jam) courtesy of Roj Trinbago Website & TnT Web Directory Roj's Trinbago Website: http://www.tntisland.com TnT Web Directory: http://search.co.tt *********************************************************