By NATARIO McKENZIE
Tribune Business Reporter
nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net
AIRLINE executives were working feverishly yesterday to alleviate the heavy backlog caused by Tropical Storm Isaac, with one executive telling Tribune Business his carrier had suffered an estimated $70,000- $80,000 revenue loss.
Bahamasair’s general manager, Henry Woods, told Tribune Business the airline was dealing with a heavy backlog which was not expected to be cleared up until Wednesday evening.
“The airport closed late Saturday evening and our last international flights to Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Orlando were cancelled. Those flights were near full going out and full coming back. We didn’t get back into operation until about 7 pm Sunday, which allowed us to only operate one flight into Miami and Fort Lauderdale each. We’ve got a heavy backlog of passengers right now, “ said Mr Woods.
“We’re trying our best to add flights and upgrade flights from Dash-8 to jets, and add jet flights on as much as possible to be able to clear it up. We don’t anticipate clearing up all of the backlog until Wednesday evening.
“This is the last week before schools open, and so the loads are normally heavy. We are already into a busy period. It couldn’t happen at a worse time. We are doing all we can to accommodate the people and get them home as quickly as possible.”
Sky Bahamas chief executive, Randy Butler, told Tribune Business yesterday: “We had cancelled all of our US flights and some of our domestic flights. Today we had to reduce our operations in order to take people we were committed to.
“It turns out we would have lost a day and a half’s worth of revenue, that’s probably $70,000-$80,000. We have got until tomorrow morning to do four extra legs to the US and we should be caught up. “
American Eagle executives were also said to be dealing with a heavy backlog yesterday and were not available for comment.
Western Air’s director of flight operations, Wolfgang Seyfret, told Tribune Business that the storm’s impact on the airline’s operations had been minimal.
“We did fairly well. There was minimum disruption. The only flights that were disrupted were Sunday morning to Congo Town and San Andros. We weren’t sure about the status of the airports. Those flights were 7am in the morning. We didn’t get the OK from air traffic control until about 8am ,so we just cancelled the flights. Other than that everything went as normal so there was minimal impact,” Captain Seyfret told Tribune Business.
Comments
Required 11 years, 7 months ago
At Orlando, Bahamasair dealt with a backlog from Friday night, when the evening flight was cancelled due to maintenance issues, and allegedly they didn't operate a full schedule on Saturday either, due to maintenance problems. While dealing with the backlog, one of their new jets appears to have been stuck in the hangar in Nassau.
The policy the Orlando staff adopted was "Foreigners First." On Monday morning, they segregated the waiting passengers into two lines. One for tourists and one for residents. They then flew out the tourists and some expats, before giving any seats to Bahamians. After about nine hours waiting, they told the Bahamians to come back Tuesday.
No first come, first serve. No stuck the longest, out the soonest. No familes with children first. No confirmed reservations for the actual flight first. (Some foreigners actually got on earlier flights than they had booked!) Just plain old discrimination against the people whose taxpayer money keeps that airline going.
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