The prime ministers of Antigua and Barbuda and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines are calling on Trinidad and Tobago to share revenue generated from overflight fees collected within the Piarco Flight Information Region (PFIR), which they say includes parts of their sovereign airspace.

The PFIR, managed by Trinidad and Tobago under International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) guidelines, spans from Antigua in the north to Trinidad in the south, covering around 750,000 square miles of airspace.

Antiguan Prime Minister Gaston Browne told _Guardian Media_ his government has acquired radar technology to monitor its own airspace and is seeking a share of the fees. He first raised the issue at a Cabinet press briefing.

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves criticised the current arrangement as a colonial-era holdover, saying it lacks transparency and excludes other Eastern Caribbean states from both management and revenue.

“Barbados and OECS countries are locked out… there’s no transparency in the accounting,” Dr Gonsalves said during his own press briefing.

More than 108,000 flights entered the PFIR between October 2023 and September 2024, according to Trinidad and Tobago’s Civil Aviation Authority.