The Tribune

• Bahamasair ‘can’t go through’ $52m plus again

• Chairman says airline ‘must make $30m work’

• Summer schedule 70% of pre-COVID capacity

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Bahamasair’s $52m-and-counting subsidy “is too much for taxpayers to bear”, its chairman admitted yesterday, while adding that it has “got to make” the next fiscal year’s $30m allocation work.

Tommy Turnquest told Tribune Business the national flag carrier “can’t go through what the government has given us” this fiscal year again, while disclosing that it is “trying to get” the government’s monthly support down to $4m-$5m compared to the near $6m run rate for the first nine months of 2020-2021.

Revealing that Bahamasair’s 2021 summer schedule, due to be released on June 13, will cover just 70 percent of the routes flown pre-COVID, Mr Turnquest said the airline is also grappling with the loss of its “high yielding” Haiti and Cuba business due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Arguing that “it’s not all doom and gloom” due to the increase in US summer travel demand, as the vaccination roll-out in The Bahamas’ key source market continues, he nevertheless conceded that “it makes no sense trying to run around the fact we’re in a deep hole” due to COVID-19’s devastating impact on international travel and Bahamasair’s exceptionally strained finances.

Asked whether the $30m subsidy provided to Bahamasair in the 2021-2022 budget is sufficient, given the bleeding endured this fiscal year, Mr Turnquest replied: “My view is that it had better cover it. We cannot go through what the government gave us this current fiscal year. It’s too much for taxpayers to bear.

“We’ve got to make it work. We’ll have to whatever we need to do to make it work. We’ve got to run it like a business. We’ve got to make it work. We’ve got to make it work. Thirty million dollars is more than most years in the past. We know we have a debt obligation for the financing of the ATRs. We have got to make the operations work with the balance.”

COVID-19 related lockdowns and border closures, together with the slow rebound of international and domestic travel, saw Bahamasair blow through its original $19m subsidy for the 2020-2021 fiscal year within months. It has sucked up some $52.494m of taxpayer monies, more than two-and-a-half times’ this sum, in the nine months to end-March 2021.

The latter figure implies that the national flag carrier has required almost $6m per month to ensure its survival to end-March. “I hope it’s not that high,” Mr Turnquest replied, when this newspaper pointed out this placed Bahamasair on course for an annual subsidy of close to $70m.

“We’re trying to get it more like $4m-$5m,” he added. “In terms of the salaries, we’re at $3.5m per month. That would be what we need in terms of retaining salary levels. If I was an employee, I would be grateful to the people of The Bahamas.

“We have to operate within the parameters we have. We have got to cut out all the excess, and I think we’re doing a good job. It is what it is. We have to still tighten our belt. The revenue is one side, and there is also cost containment, just watching the pennies.”

Mr Turnquest declined to expand on what cost containment might require. While many have argued that Bahamasair should have long been privatised or shut down, given the half-a-billion-dollar plus drain it has imposed on the Public Treasury during its existence, successive governments have justified its existence on the basis of the airline opening up new tourist markets and providing key Family Island connectivity on unprofitable routes commercial carriers will not touch.

The Bahamasair chairman, meanwhile, said the national flag carrier was responding to “increased bookings” on its US routes as well as adding flights to domestic destinations such as Abaco, Exuma and Eleuthera.

“We’re seeing a good uptick in Fort Lauderdale,” Mr Turnquest said, “so much so we’ve added an early morning flight that’s post-cleared. We leave at 7.30am in the morning before US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) open. We were doing that into Miami two times a week, and we’ve increased that to Fort Lauderdale as summer bookings look strong.

“We have a big hole to climb out of, but we’re going to give it the old college try. The Government is still providing a substantial subvention, and we’re big in the hole. There’s no sense in trying to run around that. We’re deep in the hole. We’re still reliant on the Government to survive. 

“We’re issuing our summer schedule on June 13. That schedule is still only 70 percent of the 2019 summer schedule. We just have to make the most of what we could. We’re trying to be as aggressive as we can in terms of Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, which are popular Bahamian travel destinations, and increasing routes into Miami.”

Mr Turnquest said Bahamasair plans to fly into Miami three times per day on summer weekends, with flights in the early morning, midday and afternoon, while also servicing Fort Lauderdale multiple times and going into Fort Lauderdale multiple times.

“We’ve had some discussions with the local operators in Marsh Harbour, and have increased the frequency with West Palm Beach, which is going quite well,” he added. “We’ll go into Marsh Harbour and West Palm Beach four times a week. We’re making the most of what we have. It’s not all doom and gloom.”

The Bahamasair chairman said that while the national flag carrier was “watching closely” the possibility of providing airlift to Royal Caribbean’s and Crystal Cruises’ home porting passengers, but added: “They’re not as strong as we want them to be, but don’t want to pass judgment yet, so we’re watching that.”

And Mr Turnquest said The Bahamas’ ban on travel to Haiti, as well as Cuba’s COVID-19 restrictions, continue to deprive Bahamasair of some of its higher margin routes. “The ban on Haiti flights, those yields were very good,” he explained. “We’re not seeing those, and and in Cuba we’ve been reduced to one flight every two weeks as opposed to six times a week. They were both very high yield routes in terms of our fares.

“We went into Haiti twice a week, once to Port-au-Prince and once to Cap Haitien. They’ve been suspended. We were going into Havana, Holguin and Santa Clara all twice a week, but that’s been cancelled because of the Cuban government other than flying into Havana once every second Monday.”