A private Nigerian airline, Air Peace, is acquiring 70% majority stake in beleaguered airline LIAT 2020. According to the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda where LIAT is based, Gaston Browne, the management of Air Peace entered into an agreement with Antigua to revive LIAT 2020 and get it operational again on a commercial basis instead of as a regional carrier.
Browne said that under the new arrangement, Air Peace, based in Lagos State of Nigeria and owned by Allen Onyema, a Nigerian, will provide several aircraft and other assets to operate in the Caribbean under the new name of LIAT – which originally stands for Leeward Islands Air Transport and originally commenced operations in 1956.
They will bring some assets and we will also acquire some assets as well and hopefully, we can have maybe five, six aircraft operating within the region under the name LIAT. The airline will be operating strictly on a commercial basis, so it will not be a regional bus. We are looking forward to the eventual operationalization of this new LIAT–LIAT 2020. We are committed to doing all we can to ensure its viability and sustainability.
Hon. Gaston Browne, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda
The Antiguan prime minister said that with Air Peace coming into the country, the jobs of LIAT’s airline staff will be protected and that more jobs will be created for pilots and other employees who were retrenched when the airline went bankrupt in 2022. The governments of Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, and St. Vincent are the major shareholders in LIAT 2020 after LIAT 1974 became defunct in 2020.
In April, the foreign minister of Antigua, Chet Greene, visited Nigeria and met with Nigeria’s foreign minister Goeffrey Onyeama who introduced him to Air Peace founder and CEO Allen Onyema. The parties discussed Antigua’s need for a new airline and the possibility of Air Peace acquiring a controlling stake in LIAT to rescucitate the moribund airline.
The meeting paid off. Air Peace is now expanding operations to the Caribbean with future plans to ply Barbados to Nigeria on a sustained basis. Onyema said he is glad to consider diversifying to the Caribbean and that his airline’s operations will boost socio-economic development in Antigua and the Caribbean as a whole.
Air Peace has more than 38 aircraft in its fleet and has more than 3,000 employees. Its aircraft fleet serves Africa, the Middle East, India, China, Israel, and several other countries around the world. “So what we are moving now is to establish the Air Operating Certificate (AOC) for LIAT 2020 and to have this partnership with Air Peace in which Air Peace will emerge as a 70 percent shareholder in the new LIAT,” Brown said.
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