Anyone who is remotely acquainted with or involved in the state of reasonable air transport would concede that it has been an abject mess ever since but Barbados’ withdrawal from LIAT leading to the repossession of planes and the shrinking of a mainstay carrier into a one-plane operation out of Antigua.Airline schedules, from Guyana in the south to the Leeward Islands in the north, have been wrecked, and the arrival of three airlines into the regional airspace has done nothing to improve this sorry state of affairs.For a recent regional workshop, no one from Grenada could attend because the only flights available would route them through Miami. No one from St. Vincent and the Grenadines could make it - their flights would see them being routed through London. Participants from a neighbouring island roughly 50 miles or half-an-hour’s flying time away had to arrive via British Airways. Planning to get into and out of each island has become a complex, military-style, logistical operation merely because airlines have inconvenient days of arrival and departure, their seats are invariably sold out weeks in advance, and relative comfort and convenience have been sacrificed on the altar of profit.The notion that inter-Island air transport must be the sole preserve of profit-making entities is as bizarrely unproductive for the region as the same assumption for public transport in each island. In developing countries, transport cannot be considered as purely private goods.Just as lengthy commute times are a trademark of reduced productivity, sluggish output and lax revenue in any local economy, so too does the regional economy suffer when one-day trips must become four-day excursions and a flight from one island to another becomes a game of hopscotch involving three.