Caribbean airline integration: A call to action

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - In his book, Re-engineering Management, James Champy states: The results are in: Re-engineering works—up to a point. The obstacle is management. The only way we’re going to deliver on the full promise of re-engineering is to start re-engineering management. The problem is, current Caribbean leaders will not acknowledge that leadership models across the Caribbean are badly broken, let alone that they are the one who need reengineered mindsets. Witness again, the number of times over the past two decades or more, that Caribbean leaders have been beating their chests: “We need more cooperation; we need another study; we need alliances…we need…we need…”
As recently as May 10, the shareholders of Liat met in Antigua to “seek to foster greater linkages with the T&T-owned and -operated Caribbean Airlines.” That familiar tune has been sung so many times that it’s getting old and meaningless…just more chest-beating. On April 27, 2005, former minister in the Government of T&T, Ken Gordon, wrote about capital punishment: “Our problem (of crime) is not with a shortage of ideas or recommendations. It is with the lack of political will, effective implementation, and staying the course which have been our greatest failures.” Gordon blamed the Government, “which must accept responsibility for this situation” and “stop the vacillating and take decisive action while the situation is still controllable.”