By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A Grand Lucayan board member yesterday called for The Bahamas to create its own airlift for Freeport, adding: "We can't let anybody hold us over a barrel."

Carey Leonard, pictured, the former Grand Bahama Port Authority (GBPA) in-house attorney, told Tribune Business that this nation needed to revisit a Laker Airways-type solution to keep airlift to Freeport alive following Sunwing's 2019 summer pull-out (see story HERE).

The now-Callenders & Co attorney, and director of the Government-owned special purpose vehicle (SPV) that controls the resort, said it would take between three to six months for the Government to develop its own airlift solution.

Expressing surprise at Sunwing's decision to cancel its summer airlift initiative next year, and threat to do likewise with its winter 2019-2020 schedule, Mr Leonard questioned why the Canadian-based tour operator would pull out if it was enjoying 90 percent load factors on inbound flights to Grand Bahama.

"You're kidding me. That's all we need," Mr Leonard responded, when Tribune Business informed him of Sunwing's move. "I thought they were going to be doing two flights a day this winter. But I understand they had good load factors. If they had good load factors, why stop.

"Why give up a route if the load factor is good? Why give it up? I'd certainly want to know why they're doing that and, in the same breath, say Government is not doing this and that. It doesn't add up. Something's not right there."

Sunwing, in a statement issued yesterday, blamed an "impasse" with the Government for its decision to cease all summer airlift to Grand Bahama next year. It also threatened that "under the current circumstances we may be forced to cancel all winter flights" for 2019-2020 as well.

The tour operator, whose Memories resort affiliate exited Grand Bahama in January 2017, suggested that its airlift withdrawal would take the island's stopover tourism product "backwards to its lowest levels in decades".

Without the thousands of room nights its passengers generate between May to October, the tour operator said "many of our hotel partners will be closing for some or all of the summer months and reducing staff dramatically" - dealing a fresh blow to an already-beleaguered economy and society.

Sunwing added that it was ceasing summer airlift because it was no longer "viable", even though load factors (passenger occupancy levels) on the flights from 13 US cities were running at 90 percent.

This seeming discrepancy caused some observers, as hinted at by Mr Leonard, to suggest that the tour operator's statement, knowing the Government's increased vulnerability and exposure through the Grand Lucayan acquisition, amounted to a "squeeze play" in a bid to extract more subsidies and tax breaks from the Treasury.

Mr Leonard told Tribune Business that, even if Government subsidies were required, The Bahamas needed "to seriously think about" setting up its own airlift to Freeport to ensure what currently remains of the stopover tourism product survives.

"I think we need to look very seriously at providing our own airlift, and it's not impossible to do," he told Tribune Business. "Having been involved in aviation myself, it would take three to six months to get it done, but if Sunwing is doing winter airlift we can go on from there and go into cities the local hotels are aiming for.

"Laker Airways ran very successful airlift to Grand Bahama targeted at markets the hotels were looking at. Maybe we need to look at that; we need to be getting passengers from the specific markets we're going after."

Mr Leonard said the former Princess resort was "very good" at targeting specific tourism markets, and it was only when its name (and ownership) changed to Royal Oasis that the relationship with Laker Airways fell apart.

"The only reason why Laker Airways didn't succeed was because Driftwood didn't pay for the passengers it brought in," he explained. "That finally was the undoing of Laker Airways.

"But we do know that as long as the hotels pay the airlines, the model's really sustainable. It's going to take at least three to six months to set up something, maybe not on such a grand scale, and target the markets the hotels need airlift from.

"I don't think we should let anybody hold us over a barrel."