The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A Bahamian-owned airline yesterday said it was “recovering” after Hurricane Sandy likely cost it “over $110,000” in revenues over a four-day period.

Captain Randy Butler, Sky Bahamas’ chief executive, told Tribune Business that its flight schedule was back to normal apart from Freeport. Flooding at Grand Bahama International Airport had forced it to suspend service from that city into both Nassau and Fort Lauderdale until today.

“We’re pretty much back to normal with the exception of Freeport,” he told this newspaper. “The flooding there is receding now, and they’ve got a little bit of clean-up work to do this evening. Tomorrow we should be back to normal in Freeport.”

Asked what Sandy’s financial impact on Sky Bahamas had been, Captain Butler told Tribune Business: “We’re just recovering. It’s been about four days without revenue. These are the other challenges this kind of business goes through.

“I know that four days probably means we lost over $110,000 at this time of year. We also have to fly the airplanes out, the crew, and there’s a cost to do that. We also have to fly some of the central staff and their families out also. There’s the expense of doing that and coming back. We will have suffered some damage to equipment in Freeport; computers and that kind of stuff.”

Captain Butler, who is also president of the Bahamas Aviation Association, added that Hurricane Sandy had again highlighted the need for a strategic development plan for the industry.

He argued that there needed to be an “emergency plan for evacuations”, when it came to airlifting islanders and tourists out of harm’s way.

And Captain Butler also warned that Sky Bahamas was preparing to soon increase ticket prices by around $10.49, saying airport fee increases and rising fuel costs had left it with “no choice”.

“We have to increase ticket prices shortly; we have no choice because of the airport tax increases and rising fuel costs,” he explained. “We can’t carry that load any more. The direct fee increases, we have to pass that on.”

Conscious of the consumer’s challenges in an anemic economic environment, Captain Butler said Sky Bahamas would seek to compensate for the ticket price increase through improved efficiency, on-time performance and enhanced service.

Assessing the Bahamian civil aviation industry’s challenges as a whole, the Association president said: “The Government is singlehandedly holding this business back from taking off and devloping, and revitalising development of the Family Islands.

“For as long as Bahamasair continues to have control of the market in terms of pricing, and getting subsidies from the Government, they don’t have to worry about making money as the bottomless Treasury will continue to write cheques for them.”