The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

SKY Bahamas hopes to break ground on its $1.6 million hangar during the first week in March, its chief executive telling Tribune Business that the facility could immediately save the airline 20-30 per cent in direct maintenance costs.

Captain Randy Butler said: “Our goal is hopefully to have this hanger break ground as early as March. We hope March 1-2 we will be off and pulling this thing up out of the ground.

“It’s going to do some wonderful things for us. We just had two planes go through heavy checks, one in Canada and one in the US. Combined, those airplanes cost us over $1 million on heavy checks. With this hangar, we are looking that we may save 20-30 per cent in maintenance costs directly.

“Right now we already have experts hired and working for us that have the training experience and qualifications. Because we have people working on the airplanes that are factory trained, we will be able to train local Bahamians and grow this pool of qualified maintenance technicians to pull from. It’s going to open the door for us to do maintenance on the aircraft of other companies and open up a revenue stream for us.”

Captain Butler said Sky Bahamas was performing well on the domestic front, but added: “On the international side we are not doing as good as we would like. The load factors on the domestic routes may be 60 per cent on average.

“In probably another weekend we are going to launch Long Island flights, and also connecting Long Island to Exuma three time sa week.

“We will continue with the US routes because Abaco second home owners support Sky Bahamas in a big way,” he added. “Freeport is impacted sometimes by whether the boats are going, and we are able to offer an excellent service out of Freeport.

“Nassau is always where the challenge is, and we have reduced the frequency of flights out of Nassau. We have some of the best people in the industry and the Bahamian public has been very good in supporting us. We see a role for Sky Bahamas in the future, not only in providing service but also the national development of this country to be able to provide young, trained pilots, cabin attendants, maintenance folks and other people in the agency.”