BAHAMASAIR IS BANNED FROM THE U S
The Chairman of Bahamasair Tommy Turnquest was so laden with national honours last year that he had no time to take care of Bahamasair’s business. By 1 January 2020, the airline’s planes were all to be fitted with the automatic tracking system to be able to fly into U S destinations. They failed to meet the deadline, so three of the jets cannot fly into the states until they are retrofitted. That will take until March 2020 they say. That means a mess on the scheduling. although they say that this will not be so because the ATR props will fill in for the international flights and the grounded jets will fly the family islands. One of them was already scheduled be down for the C check in Costa Rica. Philip Davis, Opposition Leader was having no excuses and called them out on it. We go further and say that Tommy Turnquest must resign. He has failed us. Here is the party’s statement:
For Immediate Release
2 January 2020
The Minister responsible for Bahamasair must address immediately in the full glare of public view how Bahamasair finds itself in this position. The Minister must have known that this was coming and failed to advise his colleagues of the need to address what was coming. Our suspicion is that political dithering landed us in this position; failing to make the hard decisions about the airline’s future.
The Free National Movement now understands that governing is hard, complex and difficult. It is easy to pronounce and flap one’s gums about this policy or that but governing requires executing decisions. Action, not talk is required.
We do not believe that the public will be well served by the airline with this new issue. We are sure to face more lateness, delays and inconvenience.
The Government expects us to believe that with passenger numbers traditionally down in the first quarter, they are going to burn fuel to fly 10 to 40 people on a 128-seat jet to our family islands. How is that financially sensible or sustainable?
We are concerned that the Government should take full political responsibility for this and not seek as they usually do to blame others for their political dithering.
The FNM has no plan to govern this country and our national enterprises. This development with Bahamasair is yet another example of the FNM dropping the ball and letting the Bahamian people down.
End