The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

The time is long past for air transport officials to recognise that there is such a thing as domestic air travel in this country.

We have copied a US system which basically sees no need to segregate international and domestic flight operations. Not surprisingly, the US is almost alone in the world in clinging to this protocol.

I accept that our hands are tied by convention and direct mandates from foreign governments and that we must impose stringent security screening on international travellers. But where in the rule book does it say we must exact the same protocols for granny going from Nassau to Long Island?

When we opened the new airport to great fan-fare in 2013 we migrated the peacefully co-existing domestic and international operations into a monolith amalgamated two-pronged system – one building for US departures and another for ALL other departures. Whether you are headed to the busiest airport in the world, London Heathrow, or simply skipping 45 miles to Andros you are subjected to the same protocol at LPIA.

It gets worse coming back to Nassau if you happen to be embarking from a Family Island airport with just one US bound departure a day.

This must stop. Canada which, like us, has US pre-clearance facilities and a big domestic market has specific domestic terminals. Security isn’t non-existent in domestic terminals, it’s just more matched to the perceived threat levels.

We know that by far the Bahamas has more airports than any other country in the entire Caribbean. We also know that the Nassau-Freeport route is one of the busiest air corridors in the region outmatched only by the Trinidad to Tobago air bridge. There they carve out domestic sections and the security personnel are more concerned with stopping drunk fliers from boarding aircraft than with whether their beverage flasks have three ounces of liquid or less.

Imagine being asked for your passport in order to board a flight from Nassau to Cat Island? The driver’s licence was eventually accepted as proof of ID but with the ticket agent admonishing the passenger quote “you can’t trust road traffic with these driver’s licence so make sure bring ya passport next time”.

The agent, though insultingly wrong, was perhaps doing the passenger a favour because moments later in the security line to get into the boarding area, an officer was asking again to see a passport, something he had rightly demanded from the Canada-bound passengers in the same line.

If we had a domestic terminal this would fall by the wayside. And it would probably make domestic air travel much cheaper. The airport charges operators a stiff rent to use the new facilities. Some of the rent is probably needed to help cover the cost of all those security officers demanding passports of Family Islanders trying to go home and Nassauvians trying to escape for the weekend.

Once you get inside the departure hall, it’s a half mile walk over to where the domestic terminal used to be because they still park the airplanes for domestic flights in the same old place.

The government hasn’t said what its master plan is for developing the airport but here’s a thought. Why not renovate the old building and make it a terminal for domestic flights only? It could be a fast-in-fast-out affair where the airline need only ensure you have a booking and then send you on your way with a cursory security screening, not the strip-to-your-bare feet shakedown that the international travellers get.

Likewise coming back. At Family Island airports build an impenetrable security wall to segregate the domestic from the international outbound passengers, just as you are required to do with inbound international passengers who must present themselves to customs and immigration.

The only thing on the minds of arriving domestic passengers should be whether Miss Suzie’s crab bag burst and the crabs are swarming the conveyor belt, as has happened recently.

The solution must be better baggage acceptance procedures, not simply to mix up some dough to go with all that crab fat.

THE GRADUATE

Nassau.

July 18, 2017.