The Tribune

THE Tribune has been accused of misleading the Bahamian public in its report on Thursday that the Bahamas, unlike 180 other countries, remains among a small group of 20 generally poor, and geographically challenged African nations that neither charge nor receive any remuneration in “overflight payments” from airlines crossing their air space. All the other 180 countries charge for these overflights and by the end of the year have earned millions of dollars in overflight fees. Not so The Bahamas.

In a press release on Thursday, Mrs Glenys Hanna Martin, PLP Minister of Transport and Aviation from 2002 until her party’s defeat last year, claims that The Tribune “erroneously and deliberately seeks to mislead the Bahamian people” on her role as former Transport and Aviation Minister “relative to the control of The Bahamas’ airspace”.

The former minister claimed that she was the one who “for the first time ever in the history of The Bahamas engaged the United States of America government to recover control of the sovereign air space of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas. As a consequence, and after high level negotiations in April 2017 an historic Declaration of Intent was executed between the two nations”. Note that this agreement was concluded one month before last year’s general elections when her government was defeated and she had to vacate her Ministry.

By June 2010, Bahamian Capt Randy Butler, CEO and President of SkyBahamas, was protesting loudly that he was “paying the US government to fly a Bahamian-registered airplane in The Bahamas to a Bahamian destination”. His voice fell on deaf ears. Seven more years of these payments continued before the inequity was resolved last year — that is as far as Bahamian aircraft were concerned — no mention was made as to whether foreign airlines were to pay in recognition of the sovereignty of our archipelago over which they still fly.

It is also interesting to note the 2006 statement in the Air Traffic Control Reform Newsletter as to why the US assumed control of The Bahamas’ airspace. “The FAA applied this authority” said the newsletter, “without protest from the Bahamas government or the Ministry of Aviation and Transport to foreign carriers whose flights use our sovereign airspace (redesignated as Miami Oceanic ZMA and considered part of the US enroute Airspace) and Bahamian carriers flying within our own airspace.”

Also in documents acquired by The Tribune, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) regretted that while the FAA presented The Bahamas government with an “Air Navigation Service Provider Proposal in 2006… no official dialogue commenced until a meeting at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was convened in March 26th 2014” — eight years later. Note these statements and observations on the performance of Mrs Hanna-Martin’s Ministry were made, not by The Tribune, but by the ICAO and FAA.

“The policy position in the interim,” said Mrs Hanna-Martin’s press release, “was that in the interim The Bahamas would begin building capacity, including the acquisition of the necessary infrastructure to assume full control of our air space.”

What utter madness. It just indicates that the PLP government’s tardiness in coming to the negotiating table was that none of them really understood the complexity of the matter they were negotiating. The last thing that this country should want is hands on control of aircraft flying in our airspace. This country could never afford the complicated equipment, nor the technical staff required. Do some research on some of the 180 countries that are making such handsome revenue from the charges for flying over their airspace and you find that very few of them manage their own air traffic control. In many areas, there is one control centre that manages the airspace for neighbouring countries. Yet these countries still make a handsome profit from their overflight fees. The Bahamas would need only one major aviation accident in a space they were monitoring to be financially wiped off the map.

We advise the FNM to engage someone well versed in these matters, and negotiate an agreement for the Americans to continue to do what they are now doing, but in order to maintain our sovereignty a fee should be paid for passage over our area. If others can do it, why can’t The Bahamas?

With this country’s present grim financial situation, and the threat to future business by the European Union, The Bahamas needs another financial escape route — annual overflight fees might just be the answer.