By KHRISNA VIRGIL

Tribune Staff Reporter

kvirgil@tribunemedia.net

AFTER much delays, officials are eying an end of April opening for the Abaco airport, Minister of Transport and Aviation Glenys Hanna-Martin said yesterday.

The Leonard M Thompson International Airport, which had an initial budget of $27million, was slated to open in October 2012; however there have been numerous setbacks with the greatest challenges being technical issues.

As most of the kinks have now been ironed out, Mrs Hanna-Martin told reporters that by the ‘end of April’ all systems will be ready to go.

“Marsh Harbour Airport has had long standing issues,” she said, “But we are winding down and are in the final stages. The wirings and equipment are being laid down. Forty people are being trained in a four week program. CCTV is being installed.

“I have been informed by the Ministry of Works that by the end of April all systems will be ready to go. This has been a learning curve for us. We sought to do our best, but the architect initially hired did not specialize in airports; next time we’ll use someone with experience in this area,” she said.

Back in December of 2012, the Minister explained to Parliament that in order to have the airport fully operational, the Christie administration would need to spend an additional $11,930,000. With the hike, the airport comes up at a total cost of nearly $40 million.

Included in the estimate was a $6 million run way extension, $3.8 million to build a freight building, $230,000 for that building’s architectural fees and $1.9 million in other architectural fees.

She told Parliamentarians that the additional high fees to have the airport opened is the result of a failure to plan coupled with ‘ad-hoc decisions’.

Officials have also determined, she said, that in planning the airport, there were no measures to ensure an optimisation of space for future expansion efforts. Neither was there proper consultation on how the facility would reach maximum energy efficiency, Mrs Hanna-Martin said.

When ground was broken on September 1, 2011, it was said by the Ingraham administration that in 10 months the facility would be completed and ready for use.