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Advertisers Dupuch & Turnquest & Co.
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Bahamasair gets new management team to improve service
“We are trying to usher in a new culture to get rid of management paralysis and bring stability, vision and leadership,” said Paul D. Major, managing director of Bahamasair. Major, a banker by trade, brings years of experience in both the public and private sectors having worked with Citibank and the Bahamas Development Bank.
Major reported that Bahamasair has had 18 general managers in 27 years. “If I make it until next June, I will have set a record,” he joked.
“I come from a private-sector background where customer satisfaction and accountability are important,” he said. He and his management team are trying to instill these values in the Bahamasair environment. One of the first things they have done is change the Bahamas slogan to “serving you with pride and care at Bahamasair”.
According to Frederick S. Donathan, Bahamasair’s director of sales and marketing, the company’s previous lack of on-time service earned the slogan “if you have time to spare, fly Bahamasair,” throughout the Bahamas. “We working to change that to ‘if you have time to spare, go elsewhere.’ “
“The director of tourism in a recent address to Business Outlook 2000 made the emphatic point that if Bahamasair cannot do it right, get out of the business,” noted Major. “I agree with that. Because the business of being late all the time and not being sure if a flight will even occur is just no good for tourism. It is no good for business period,” he added.
The process is not easy but Bahamasair is making progress. In the last two months, the company has re-trained staff, emphasized customer service and mandated that flights leave on time. Major reported that they have also had to undertake public re-education program about on being on time for flights. “If the plane leaves at 8 a.m., then it leaves whether everyone that was supposed to be on it is there,” said Major.
In the airport, a customer confirmed that saying, “Yes, I could not believe that the plane left on time; it was never on time before and it left without me.”
The management team is also working to improve maintenance and looking at the possibility of expanding its fleet. Currently, Bahamasair has five Dash 8s, two shorts and two 737s. According to Major, Bahamasair would like to add two more Dash 8s and one or two 737s.
Changes include the installation of both a professional, full-time consultant to manage the engineering department and a new acting director of engineering who is being trained. Soon Bahamasair will fully automate and modernize its operations from Inagua to Orlando and enable ticketless travel, an investment of $600,000.
Despite its poor on-time service reputation, the company has a perfect safety record in its 30-year history. It is Federal Aviation Administration approved and flies several flights daily to Miami. Bahamasair once flew to other cities in the United States and the new management team will be considering the recuperation of markets such as Newark, N.J., Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.
Recently, there has been growth from Marsh Harbor, Abaco to Palm Beach and Orlando to Nassau as well as increased traffic that flies directly from Miami to several of The Bahama Islands.
According to Major, there are some limits. He explains that just as U.S. airlines cannot move traffic within the Bahamas, Bahamasair will not be able to move traffic within the United States.
Bahamasair has and will continue to play an important part in regional development. Major explained that Bahamasair has a dual focus. It has a domestic market to contend with and it wants to move tourists so that they can experience the ambiance of the Outer Islands.
As Major noted, domestic service is almost essential because of the Bahamas archipelagic construction. “In the prime minister’s words, ‘we have an obligation to move our citizens and their goods between islands,’ particularly from New Providence to remote islands,” he said.
Some islands have very little and food, water and clothing must be transported from either New Providence or Miami. “We can’t leave that to any other airline. We have to go to these islands. There isn’t enough traffic to justify regularly scheduled service to some of the islands and so we want to get tourists to these islands to increase the frequency of flights.”
“We see tourism as our principal source of revenue and we have to package and market the Bahamas as more than just New Providence,” noted Major. “We are moving ahead on all fronts. We want to be the carrier of choice within the next 18 months.”
There is talk of privatizing Bahamasair in the future after some of the other governmental entities have undergone the process; however, if the company becomes profitable, perhaps the government and the people of The Bahamas will want to hold on to it.
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Table of Contents The Bahamas: An established tourism and tax-free financial services center experiences a renaissance |
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Bahamasair, a government-owned airline, is the largest airline that flies between the major inhabited islands in the Bahamas. It has been plagued with complaints about poor customer service, late flights and lost baggage. In the last two months, that has all begun to change with a new management team put in place in early January.