Chief Operating Officer Anthony Dean also said on Tuesday that seven single pilot operators were licensed to fly in recent months, while four to five have made applications.
Mr. Dean could not however confirm whether those recently licensed previously operated their businesses illegitimately.
During an earlier interview with the Journal, Flight Standard Manager Patrick Rolle indicated that his department was working in conjunction with the Ministry of Tourism to bring order to operations at Nassau International Airport.
At the time, he indicated that the Ministry of Tourism was making special identification logos to be placed only on certified aircraft.
But according to Mr. Dean, the identification logos are still a work in progress.
“This has not been completed as yetﾅ[We hope] that will become a reality sometime this year,” he said.
Mr. Dean added that when it comes to the plan to set up an official web page to publish the names of legitimate charter operators, “this is being worked on.”
The department has also revealed plans to publish a passengersﾒ rights list.
This list would highlight some of the things that passengers should know prior to traveling with a charter company.
Air hackers or uncertified air charter operators had reportedly become big business in The Bahamas with officials estimating that thousands of dollars are lost to the unscrupulous practice.
But as far as Mr. Dean sees it, business for air hackers will continue to thrive because of several key reasons, among them the fact that passengers do not complain about the issue.
“The people who fly with them are not going to say anything. Hackers operate on your time. And so 90 percent of the people who fly with the alleged air hackers, know the pilots personally. And once you have gotten used to something like this, youﾒre not going to break that habit,” he explained.
“ﾅAnd then those who really do not want to become legal operators are just hell bent on not being monitored because there is an audit of every operator ﾖ sometimes planned, sometimes random. This is to ensure that the company licensed by the government is living up to its obligations in terms of maintenance and staffing.”
He also pointed out that despite efforts to alleviate what has become a nagging problem for legitimate air charter companies, this would not make much difference.
“When it comes time to party and you want to go to those regattas, you just want to get there,” Mr. Dean said.
“So people are not worrying about whether the operators are air hackers. In fact, the majority of hackers only work around regatta time. There are so many people traveling that the local operators just canﾒt handle it. And so if there was no market for the hackers, then they would not exist.”
By: Macushla N. Pinder, The Bahama Journal
