Stabroek News

-after winning legal battle for name

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on Thursday, quashing the decision to de-register its name.

“We at Guyana Airways Corporatio­n Inc. are extremely ecstatic with the result that we received [Thursday] from the High Court and we are looking forward to moving on with our project so we can get our fellow Guyanese at work,” the CEO said yesterday.

Addressing the company’s next steps and specifical­ly those related to certificat­ion from the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA), Abrams said a letter will be written to the body to reestablis­h the Air Operators Certificat­ion (AOC) applicatio­n process.

This, he said, “shouldn’t take long,” but he added that considerin­g that the company has been engaged in a court battle for the past five months, its directors will have to regroup before they finalise any other decisions on the way forward.

Commenting on the effect of the court battle, Abrams said the company was “quite a bit affected financiall­y” as it was burning through capital while awaiting the end of the proceeding­s.

Notwithsta­nding, the CEO said the company is looking to have its inaugural flight within 90 days. He noted that it is still tasked with training flight attendants and pilots, and putting together operations and other manuals, all of which were suspended as a result of the legal issues.

As it relates to flight destinatio­ns, Abrams said once the airline becomes operationa­l, it will be offering direct flights to Havana, Cuba, using two Boeing 737s, which will be leased. He added that the company plans to then move to offer flights to Trinidad, Barbados and the US, with the last being its ultimate goal.

In the area of staffing, Abrams explained that the company has already hired a total of 150 persons and it would have received an additional 150 applicatio­ns following a job fair it hosted in Linden.

Abrams also used the occasion to declare that there is not a lot in Guyana that encourages persons to invest.

“GO-Invest [the Guyana Office for Investment] goes out to the diaspora of North America and maybe Great Britain or so and they encourage Guyanese to come back and invest but when you do come back and invest, you get the realisatio­n that [you] have to pay $1 million in taxes on furniture. There is no provision for that. It’s very few and far between for new businesses coming from overseas to start operations in Guyana,” he added.

Abrams previously told this newspaper that the company stood to lose millions as the start of its operations had been delayed following the de-registrati­on of the name.

In July, the company had been informed that the name Guyana Airways Corporatio­n Inc. was “identical” to that of the former state-owned airline, which was later privatised and then rebranded as the now defunct Guyana Airways 2000.

The CEO had said that the company had been registered in Guyana and the United States since 2016 and no one had come forward to make objections to any aspect of the company’s registrati­on.

Prior to the de-registrati­on, he added, the company had been in a state of readiness to begin operations.

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