Carrier has been in operation for under three months

Durrant Pate/Contributor

Virtual carrier Antigua Airways has been forced to suspend flights after failing to meet regulatory requirements.

The political executive of Antigua and Barbuda says the owners of the airline have promised to resolve all the pending issues before resuming their transatlantic services. It is unclear what provisions the virtual carrier has run afoul of but they are serious enough to merit a suspension of operations until they are resolved.

However, in a statement, the Cabinet of Antigua and Barbuda said “the rules governing the member countries of the Eastern Caribbean Civil Aviation Authority (ECCAA) are very strict; Antigua Airways had not complied fully with all of them. The organisers have pledged to fix all the deficiencies before resuming their service across the Atlantic from the Motherland”.

Antigua Airways has styled itself as the “Pride of the Caribbean” online and is 20 per cent owned by the Antiguan government through its Citizenship by Investment programme. The remaining 80 per cent is owned by a Nigerian publishing company, Marvelous Mike Press. The carrier aims to connect Antigua and Barbuda to Abuja before expanding to more destinations.

Forced to pause

It is unclear if the imitation airlines played a role in Antigua Airways’ suspension but for now, things remain uncertain about the virtual airline’s future. Antigua’s newest carrier was been forced to pause operations after only flying its inaugural service on November 1 last year. 

Notably, the carrier is a ‘virtual airline,’ meaning that it uses wet-leased aircraft for its operations and largely works on marketing with Nigerian travel agency, Wakanow providing ticketing and Aerostatus providing aviation services.

Antigua Airways has not been flying recently and its last tour package listed was a New Year’s trip from Abuja on December 26, 2022 and returning to VC Bird Airport in Antigua on January 5, 2023. The carrier was using a euroAtlantic Boeing 767-300ER for operations.

On its website, the carrier lists Accra, Ghana, and Toronto, Canada as its next two destinations. However, no tickets seem to have been sold to the two destinations, despite the heavy mention of transatlantic services online.

Antigua Airways itself is just a marketing name with the work outsourced to several Nigerian companies and operating with a Portuguese wet lease operator. Antigua and Barbuda’s Information Minister, Melford Nicholas points out that Antigua Airways has not flown one of its marketed flights since early January noting that there are some West African visitors, who needs to be repatriated.

Speaking with Caribbean News Weekly, Information Minister Melford Nicholas said: “It is recognised that there are a number of persons who had come on earlier flights who are still in Antigua and may need to be returned to their respective jurisdictions. We will obviously have to arrange for an aircraft to arrive to take those persons who are here back home in the coming days and weeks. Antigua Airways, in order to establish the commercial viability of the route, arranged a few [chartered flights] and that came with clamor. What had transpired since was that their efforts were imitated by another operator who would have arranged another charter outside of the knowledge of the government.”