The Tribune

For the fourth time in less than a year, a Bahamian attorney will attend a major international aviation conference with the goal of leaving home with a brief case and returning with new information and industry relationships.

“I’ve gotten to a point where I joke about how travelling like a Bahamian, I always come home with more than I left with, but in my case it’s about industry developments, new orders for aircraft and new professional relationships,” said Llewellyn Boyer-Cartwright, a partner at the Callenders & Co law firm.

He will attend the conference in Malta on March 4, his fourth following others in Washington D.C., Orlando and Aruba.

Mr Boyer-Cartwright, a former commercial jet pilot and a senior lawyer, has been a lone voice calling for attention to be placed on the Bahamas’ aviation regime.

In response, in late 2012 the Government convened an Aircraft Registry Consultative Committee, hoping to propel an initiative first proposed by the Bahamas Financial Services Board (BFSB) as long ago as 1999, but later dropped until Mr Boyer-Cartwright picked up the baton again and, with the BFSB, approached the Government.

“There are so many opportunities out there for business for the Bahamas if we establish a quality aircraft registry,” said Mr Boyer-Cartwright, “financing, legal services, appraisals, surveying, inspection, maintenance, repair, fuelling, pilots, landing fees.”

But, he added, developing an aircraft registry and generating business for it is dependent on two major factors - the ratification of the Cape Town Convention, a legal treaty that would bring the Bahamas in line with most of the rest of the world in protection for third party rights, and the,the removal of Stamp Duty on Bahamian-registered aircraft.

“We have the potential to create so many jobs, to contribute to financial services through aircraft financing, to build new industries and diversify the Bahamian economy,” said Mr Boyer-Cartwright.

“The income derived from establishment of a registry would far outweigh what is currently collected from Stamp Tax, which provides little to no income because there are so few registered aircraft.”

Mr Boyer-Cartwright said his goal at the Malta conference, which is called ‘Opportunities in Business Jets’, is to forge relationships with leading regulators, including the Director of Civil Aviation of Malta and the Director of the Malta Aircraft Registry.

“I also want to get a better feel for the marketing,” he added. “If we do establish an international aircraft registry - and I believe we will - we will need to understand very clearly how best to market the Bahamas in a way that appeals to owners of private jet aircraft.

“It is a booming industry, and I just hope we move quickly enough to benefit from it before all our neighbours leapfrog over us. Guernsey in the Channel Islands is already jumping on board, will launch their aircraft registry in June 2013, and estimate that they will have 150 aircraft on their register by 2015. I have to trust that we will move with equal urgency and prudence.”

Mr Boyer-Cartwright, the only member of a law firm in the Bahamas named as a finalist in the 2012 BFSB excellence awards, is one of three newly-appointed partners at Callenders.