Hundreds of unemployed former LIAT workers could find a home with the US-based Frontier Airlines.
Just weeks after its billion-dollar merger with Spirit Airlines, Frontier is offering thousands of jobs over the next few years, and aviation professionals in the Antigua and Barbuda are being invited to apply.
President and CEO of Frontier Airlines, Barry Biffle said the carrier is looking to open up 10,000 new positions to fill airline jobs by the year 2026.
“The Minister of Tourism reached out to me recently and he was talking to me about opportunities of and the fact that his country has pilots and mechanics who worked with the former LIAT who may be looking for an opportunity. And as luck would have it, we are growing,” he said.
He said the airline is looking to triple the size of Frontier by the end of the decade by adding 10,000 jobs just by 2026.
“We’re just really excited about the opportunity that we could hire some West Indian people from Antigua and maybe neighbouring islands that maybe worked for LIAT in the past. We have some really trained professionals. It would be a great opportunity for them to not just get back to flying but fly tourists to the region. It would really be a win win for everyone,” he announced.
Biffle said the company would act as a sponsor to help these workers obtain employment visas to allow them to work with the airline.
“Even if you don’t have a US passport, we’re committing to work with you, everybody who’s qualified, to get a visa, to go through the EB2 programme so they could live and work in the United States. I know a lot of people, because of their nationality can’t work in other places … I want to commit that we will sponsor and can them to work with Frontier,” he said.
Tourism Minister Charles Max Fernandez said the recent merger paved the way for this opportunity.
“I reached out to him to congratulate him for their growth and their merging of Frontier and Spirit and I immediately said if there are opportunities for employment for the Caribbean, more specifically in our case, Antigua and Barbuda, we’d love to have him reach out and certainly he jumped at it,” Fernandez explained.
Last December, Frontier was established as the only non-stop flight linking Orlando, Florida, to Antigua and Barbuda.
Interested persons can visit Flyfrontier.com, click on the carrier section and follow instructions.