The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Bahamasair’s weekly jet service to Cape Haitien has been “leaving full every time” even though service to the country’s capital has been suspended from January 28, its managing director revealed yesterday.

Tracy Cooper told Tribune Business the increasing instability and deteriorating security situation in Port-au-Prince had upended the national flag carrier’s Haiti business model to the extent that flights to the northern coastal city are departing with 98 percent average load factors (passenger capacity).

The demand has forced Bahamasair to deploy one of its 138-seater jets to the route, marking a reversal from when Port-au-Prince would have been the prime destination and merited such capacity. The airline suspended services to the Haitian capital one day after it was reported that five Bahamians from Bahamasair were unable to leave Port-au-Prince’s airport due to protests by police force members over gang-related killings of their comrades.

“We have suspended flights into Port-au-Prince,” Mr Cooper confirmed to this newspaper. “We did our last flight on January 28. Then the suspension went into February and it will stay in place until we can see a better situation in Port-au-Prince. But we have seen this trending for a while.

“What we were seeing is that persons were not travelling to Port-au-Prince; they were travelling more to Cape Haitien for a while.” As a result, Bahamasair had already prior to the suspension reduced seat capacity to 50 on the Port-au-Prince route while allocating the 138-seat jet to the northern coastal city.

“Flights are going relatively full,” Mr Cooper said. “From December, they’ve had 98 percent load factors, leaving full every time. What we have done is taken Port-au-Prince and moved it to Cape Haitien. Back in the day Port-au-Prince was the premier route, but definitely no more, especially at the moment.”

The Bahamasair chief also disclosed that the national flag carrier is actively seeking to lease another jet to help service proposed new routes to Caribbean destinations, Antigua & Barbuda and Barbados, which could launch during summer 2023.

Confirming the plan, and that governments in both those nations had approached Bahamasair about starting service, Mr Cooper said: “We’re looking at... it wouldn’t be anything in the first quarter. If we do anything it will probably be in the summer.

“Flights would start from The Bahamas, go to Florida and go down into the Caribbean. The reason why is that we probably have to acquire another aircraft to make it all work. We’re actively doing that now.” Mr Cooper said Bahamasair hopes to catch, then surpass, its pre-COVID record performance of 2019 during 2023 while also meeting the Government’s expectations in terms of cutting the taxpayer subsidies that the airline receives.

“We did relatively well for the Christmas period. We met expectations as related to our Budget,” he told this newspaper. “For Christmas, for the US flights, we were having over 80 percent load factors. December 2019 and December past were comparative. The months before were still slightly below the COVID numbers so we expect that in 2023 we will be matching 2019’s highs.”

Describing the deputy prime minister’s forecast that 2023 tourist arrivals will hit the eight million mark, a 14 percent jump on last year’s numbers, as “very interesting”, Mr Cooper continued: “We are feeling the expectation of the fact that as well we think that it will be a better year. Right now we’re saying we’re reaching for the comparative numbers from 2019.

“2019 was the best year we’ve had, and we’re trying to reach there and move on. The projections from the Ministry of Tourism are quite encouraging.” Bahamasair also relies heavily on citizens and residents travelling, which contributed heavily to the airline’s December showing.

“Bahamians were doing a lot of the Santa Claus stuff in December,” Mr Cooper said. “Based on that, we expect that Bahamasair has recovered as the travelling Bahamian market has recovered. The numbers the Ministry of Tourism is talking about are tourists and, combined with the fact there were healthy Bahamian movements in December, we see that 2023 is going to be good. 2022 wasn’t bad; we just didn’t hit 2019 numbers, but are moving in the right direction.”

Mr Cooper said Bahamasair was now finalising its budget numbers and forecasts for the 2023-2024 financial year, which begins on July 1 in line with the Government’s fiscal year. The national flag carrier is due to receive a $32m taxpayer subsidy in the current 2022-2023 period, according to last May’s Budget, with this number projected to shrink to $21m next year and to $19m in 2024-2025.

“With the new budget numbers for 2023-2024 we intend to reduce the amount of subsidy needed from the Government,” Mr Cooper added. “We’re not finished with the budget yet, it will probably be finalised some time in March. Needless to say we hope it will be to the Government’s expectations. We know what the Government is looking for and will try to make that.

“Domestic travel is always a little bit behind the international. In a lot of locations the population is not enough to drive key flows, and we’re doing flights more from a transportation standpoint. The domestic market tends to be a bit lower. We tend to see, according to what time of year it is, anywhere from 50-60 percent load factors.”