Our politrickians across the region seem to be these edumacated buffoons (good words!) whose sole purpose in life seem to be how fast and how full they can line their own pockets. The last Administration left Barbados $2 billion in debt while frantically employing lawyers to legalise their thefts with a range of documentations.
En masse they all seem to focus on themselves and their own wallets - where have our statesmen gone, the ones focusing on the horizon and how best they could prepare their people - and their region - for the future??
caricom did not come from nowhere, but this bunch of greedy narcissistic self-loving elected dictators are pulling that framework down while at the same time they are spouting to all and sundry about regional unity.
They, too, are enabling foreign purchasing of local lands, and warnings that it will not be long before our own peoples are returned to a tourism and absentee landlord service economy - modern slavery - if such a trend continues.
If there is to be salary deferment or cut or loss of severance pay for ANY employees that would set a LEGAL precedent for the future. Unions, take note!!!
And if that is to happen, let us also establish the legal precedent, integral with the employee condition, that the Prime Minister and all of his colleagues take a salary deferment too. In fact, since THEIR salary is so high they could take a 25% haircut and not even notice it.
This legal precedent should require that any hardship imposed on workers and employees are shared by those who are imposing that hardship - the politicians and government workers /civil service.
These days it needs to repeated, over and over again, that politicians are servants of the people, that the people are NOT the servants of the politicians.
The airline was destroyed by the actions and inactions of the politicians who represented the taxpayers, NOT by the citizens. To make it worse, they were advised and cajoled for the last 30 years to make changes and refused to do so. They KNEW, and refused to act.
However badly we may need tourism and however closely physically we may exist next to another country, I cannot help but deplore the sucking up to that other country as if their national affairs were our own.
The Bahamas is an independent sovereign country which fought for its independence and even has its own constitution - not the warped, distorted, interpreted-500-ways self-issued freely-made-up Constitution of the USA.
The Bahamas should be making up its own mind about its own future and the future of its own national possessions, not thrashing them through a roll call of political hacks and their 4-year political mash cycle to emerge with a decision that Bahamians will be required to live with.
These are not questions only for BajamasAir. Caribbean Airlines and LIAT are both government-owned airlines where politicial interference is both common and historical, anjd management is abysmally incompetent. Both airlines have lost vast amounts of taxpayer money - far more than BahamasAir - for decades, yet the incompetence, interference and ignorance continues. Cayman Airways does seems to be making headway. Privately owned InterCaribbean in the Turks & Caicos, I hear, has a debt of some four to eight million US dollars to the government there - not only of unpaid fees, but also of departure taxes and other collections it has not delivered to the Airports Authority, which it refuses to pay and for which it is begging the politicians for a nullification (not for the first time). Proof you do not need to be a government-owned airline to suck at the public trough. Chairman of the LIAT Shareholders, PM Ralph Gonsalves, has gone as far as to say that this is how LIAT is meant to be operated - at a US$50 million loss year after year, at taxpayer expense, and that he has no intention of making any changes towards solvency. In LIAT we must remember that the Chairmanship does not rotate. The Marxist "Comrade Ralph" assumed that position and has never left it. We must also remember that Comrade Ral[ph's shares are very small, so where Barbados' share of US$6\50 million will be more than half, the cunning boastful Comrade barely has to open his country's wallet. Caribbean Airlines similarly has a long history of incompetence, no matter their constant boasting about superiority and talent in management. The recent shell game played with the US DoT over subsidies on routes (an annual $300 million fuel subsidy replaced by an annual $400 million "infrastructure grant"), CAL picked up the most lucrative routes of AIr Jamaica and crashed them within a year, then had their CAA declare that the words "Air Jamaica" could no longer be used on the aircraft because it was 100% the National Airline Of Trinidad Anmd Tobago (Jamaica owns 16% in the deal). So BahamasAir is on the loweest end of a drain on Caribbean taxpayers pockets, though taxpayers have every right - everywhere and anywhere - to protest such waste. So the real trough-suckers are much further south in the Caribbean.
That the -600 Setries use less fuel is a falsehood - as has been discovered by both Caribbean Airlines and LIAT. The earlier versions use less fuel, yes, but also fly at slower speeds. They were touted as such to LIAT by Trinidadian Ian Brunton, as was a proposal that LIAT's fleet change would cost US$100 million - in fact, at the end of the day they will cost LIAT closer to US$250 million.
The -600 Series have the same engines, but they have been "uprated". Turbine engines can be set to produce a specific power rating, and the ones on the -600 Series produce more power to provide the additional speed to compete with comparable aircraft - such as the Dash-8 Q400.
The ATRs also do not have the STOL capacity of the Dash-8-300 that BahamasAir is using now, so I hope the runway lengths are adequate.
I sincerely hope this is not to exchange the Dash-8s for the catastrophic ATRs which Caribbean Airlines and LIAT were jammed into. Both airlines have had costs and limitations far beyond what were promised, and they may be the reason for LIAT's impending demise.
Even now, LIAT is having problems going into and out of two airports in the EC. And on a monthly basis they are having to decide between paying for the new aircraft or paying salaries.
I do hope the heads of the Bahamian politicians are not as dense and solid as the heads of the eastern Caribbean political leaders - only Trinidad, with their own oil and gas, can afford the endless expenses these airplanes incur - and the furnishings of the liat atrs - brand new aircraft - are falling apart inside already, where the 20+year-old Dash-8s soldier on in almost-new condition.
If the swapped airplanes are in fact ATRs, don't ever say nobody warned you.
To me, if they were to swap Dash-8-100 or Dash-8-300 for the Dash-8 Q400, that would make a great deal more sense - and would be much more logical (depending on the limitations of the runways they are serving now).
Oh my God, are these Caribbean pilots making a decent salary? How could anyone have allowed this disgusting tragedy to happen? And then they want to stand up for their rights?
ingrates!!! fire them all!!!
Then the Bahamas government can privatise the company, and the successors can hire American, Canadian and British ex-patriates and pay them the same subsistence-level salaries other Caribbean pilots in the region make.
Whether you agree with me or not, the fact remains that the politicians - in particular the DPM - are attacking YOUR basic human rights, including YOUR right to take industrial action. And please remember that industrial action has no value if it is performed at the most convenient point iof time for the employer. --- So keep kicking the pilots, agree with the politicians, and one of theses days it will be YOUR job they are outsourcing or making you work six days a week. --- As I have said here before, the pilots did not just walk off the job, they must have had a reason. And if you keep blaming the pilots you will be allowing an incompetent management to get away - yet again - with causing a disruption and shifting the blame elsewhere. --- How did the pilots get such high salaries? Perhaps by negotiating professionally with incompetent managers? ALL unions, no matter what area, do the best they can for their members - nurses, pilots, labourers, dock workers, no matter who - and if they could get a million dollars a year for any or all of them then it is the management who is to blame, not the uinion or employees.
I would rather suggest gross mismanagement - and gross political stupidity. Only with a team of incompetent managers would a company prefer to face disruption of service and the possibility of millions of dollars in lost revenue, expenses and uncountable lost good will of customers instead of negotiating in good faith with professionals who, if turned against the company, could bankrupt the airline with very little effort - and certainly in ways in which they cannot be prosecuted. . Bahamasair needs its pilots to be in good humour, not angry. . I would also suggest their curtrent salaries certainly were not handed to them on a platter, those amounts were negotiated with an incompenent team of managers over the years. You only get what your union fights for, and it appears management were not up to running a financially viable ship. . As to wasting money, ask those management types what THEIR salaries are - they are certainly getting close to double or triople what the highest paid pilot is paid. And I bet they enjoyed a whack of a Christmas bonus, too. . So stop kicking them pilots... as professionals they did not walk off the job just because they felt like it, they did so because they were driven to take industrial action when there was no alternative. . I have seen it before myself, so nobody can tell me that's not possible. Take a management which is unqualified, rude and ignorant, and they will believe they know better and can do better than anyone else. They also cannot count - negotiating a reasonable salary increase would probably not have cost Bahamasair what this strike has so far, including the loss of goodwill in its passengers. . Finally, don't believe everything you read in the Press. It is unliklely that the pilot union "demanded" 7% a year, more like they presented a 7% offer as the beginning of a negotiation - where the other side does the same. An arrogant, ignorant and incompetent management would be the kind of people to see the standard beginning of any negotiation as the sound of the bell to come out swinging at whatever moves.
So just clarify for me... in The Bahamas the Deputy Prime Minister has the LEGAL authority to be Judge, Jury and Executioner?
Because, according to this article, he has already decided that the pilots have no right to either industrial action or due process, and has already set in place a punishment for their actions.
If you Bahamian folks don't want your taxes to pay huge legal bills and an even larger financial court award, you should get somebody - the Prime Minister?? - to talk to this political idiot quickly and get him to clean up his act.
bimjim says...
Our politrickians across the region seem to be these edumacated buffoons (good words!) whose sole purpose in life seem to be how fast and how full they can line their own pockets. The last Administration left Barbados $2 billion in debt while frantically employing lawyers to legalise their thefts with a range of documentations.
En masse they all seem to focus on themselves and their own wallets - where have our statesmen gone, the ones focusing on the horizon and how best they could prepare their people - and their region - for the future??
caricom did not come from nowhere, but this bunch of greedy narcissistic self-loving elected dictators are pulling that framework down while at the same time they are spouting to all and sundry about regional unity.
They, too, are enabling foreign purchasing of local lands, and warnings that it will not be long before our own peoples are returned to a tourism and absentee landlord service economy - modern slavery - if such a trend continues.
Stay safe.
On What next for Turnquest? ‘We’ll see’
Posted 11 December 2020, 7:49 a.m. Suggest removal
bimjim says...
If there is to be salary deferment or cut or loss of severance pay for ANY employees that would set a LEGAL precedent for the future. Unions, take note!!!
And if that is to happen, let us also establish the legal precedent, integral with the employee condition, that the Prime Minister and all of his colleagues take a salary deferment too. In fact, since THEIR salary is so high they could take a 25% haircut and not even notice it.
This legal precedent should require that any hardship imposed on workers and employees are shared by those who are imposing that hardship - the politicians and government workers /civil service.
These days it needs to repeated, over and over again, that politicians are servants of the people, that the people are NOT the servants of the politicians.
The airline was destroyed by the actions and inactions of the politicians who represented the taxpayers, NOT by the citizens. To make it worse, they were advised and cajoled for the last 30 years to make changes and refused to do so. They KNEW, and refused to act.
On 'Nothing off table' over Bahamasair cost-cutting plans
Posted 24 July 2020, 3:58 p.m. Suggest removal
bimjim says...
However badly we may need tourism and however closely physically we may exist next to another country, I cannot help but deplore the sucking up to that other country as if their national affairs were our own.
The Bahamas is an independent sovereign country which fought for its independence and even has its own constitution - not the warped, distorted, interpreted-500-ways self-issued freely-made-up Constitution of the USA.
The Bahamas should be making up its own mind about its own future and the future of its own national possessions, not thrashing them through a roll call of political hacks and their 4-year political mash cycle to emerge with a decision that Bahamians will be required to live with.
On BUSINESS BITES: Time to pull the plug on Bahamasair
Posted 12 July 2019, 1:33 p.m. Suggest removal
bimjim says...
These are not questions only for BajamasAir.
Caribbean Airlines and LIAT are both government-owned airlines where politicial interference is both common and historical, anjd management is abysmally incompetent. Both airlines have lost vast amounts of taxpayer money - far more than BahamasAir - for decades, yet the incompetence, interference and ignorance continues. Cayman Airways does seems to be making headway.
Privately owned InterCaribbean in the Turks & Caicos, I hear, has a debt of some four to eight million US dollars to the government there - not only of unpaid fees, but also of departure taxes and other collections it has not delivered to the Airports Authority, which it refuses to pay and for which it is begging the politicians for a nullification (not for the first time). Proof you do not need to be a government-owned airline to suck at the public trough.
Chairman of the LIAT Shareholders, PM Ralph Gonsalves, has gone as far as to say that this is how LIAT is meant to be operated - at a US$50 million loss year after year, at taxpayer expense, and that he has no intention of making any changes towards solvency.
In LIAT we must remember that the Chairmanship does not rotate. The Marxist "Comrade Ralph" assumed that position and has never left it. We must also remember that Comrade Ral[ph's shares are very small, so where Barbados' share of US$6\50 million will be more than half, the cunning boastful Comrade barely has to open his country's wallet.
Caribbean Airlines similarly has a long history of incompetence, no matter their constant boasting about superiority and talent in management. The recent shell game played with the US DoT over subsidies on routes (an annual $300 million fuel subsidy replaced by an annual $400 million "infrastructure grant"), CAL picked up the most lucrative routes of AIr Jamaica and crashed them within a year, then had their CAA declare that the words "Air Jamaica" could no longer be used on the aircraft because it was 100% the National Airline Of Trinidad Anmd Tobago (Jamaica owns 16% in the deal).
So BahamasAir is on the loweest end of a drain on Caribbean taxpayers pockets, though taxpayers have every right - everywhere and anywhere - to protest such waste. So the real trough-suckers are much further south in the Caribbean.
On ADRIAN GIBSON: What is going on inside Bahamasair?
Posted 17 December 2015, 5:16 p.m. Suggest removal
bimjim says...
That the -600 Setries use less fuel is a falsehood - as has been discovered by both Caribbean Airlines and LIAT. The earlier versions use less fuel, yes, but also fly at slower speeds. They were touted as such to LIAT by Trinidadian Ian Brunton, as was a proposal that LIAT's fleet change would cost US$100 million - in fact, at the end of the day they will cost LIAT closer to US$250 million.
The -600 Series have the same engines, but they have been "uprated". Turbine engines can be set to produce a specific power rating, and the ones on the -600 Series produce more power to provide the additional speed to compete with comparable aircraft - such as the Dash-8 Q400.
The ATRs also do not have the STOL capacity of the Dash-8-300 that BahamasAir is using now, so I hope the runway lengths are adequate.
Just so you know what you are getting into...
On Bahamasair moves to replace aging fleet
Posted 17 June 2015, 6:25 p.m. Suggest removal
bimjim says...
I sincerely hope this is not to exchange the Dash-8s for the catastrophic ATRs which Caribbean Airlines and LIAT were jammed into. Both airlines have had costs and limitations far beyond what were promised, and they may be the reason for LIAT's impending demise.
Even now, LIAT is having problems going into and out of two airports in the EC. And on a monthly basis they are having to decide between paying for the new aircraft or paying salaries.
I do hope the heads of the Bahamian politicians are not as dense and solid as the heads of the eastern Caribbean political leaders - only Trinidad, with their own oil and gas, can afford the endless expenses these airplanes incur - and the furnishings of the liat atrs - brand new aircraft - are falling apart inside already, where the 20+year-old Dash-8s soldier on in almost-new condition.
If the swapped airplanes are in fact ATRs, don't ever say nobody warned you.
To me, if they were to swap Dash-8-100 or Dash-8-300 for the Dash-8 Q400, that would make a great deal more sense - and would be much more logical (depending on the limitations of the runways they are serving now).
On Bahamasair to unveil new fleet 'within 30 days'
Posted 12 May 2015, 9:04 a.m. Suggest removal
bimjim says...
Oh my God, are these Caribbean pilots making a decent salary? How could anyone have allowed this disgusting tragedy to happen? And then they want to stand up for their rights?
ingrates!!! fire them all!!!
Then the Bahamas government can privatise the company, and the successors can hire American, Canadian and British ex-patriates and pay them the same subsistence-level salaries other Caribbean pilots in the region make.
Right? Right? Anybody?
On Bahamasair sickout cost airline $820,000
Posted 26 February 2015, 5:24 p.m. Suggest removal
bimjim says...
Whether you agree with me or not, the fact remains that the politicians - in particular the DPM - are attacking YOUR basic human rights, including YOUR right to take industrial action. And please remember that industrial action has no value if it is performed at the most convenient point iof time for the employer. --- So keep kicking the pilots, agree with the politicians, and one of theses days it will be YOUR job they are outsourcing or making you work six days a week. --- As I have said here before, the pilots did not just walk off the job, they must have had a reason. And if you keep blaming the pilots you will be allowing an incompetent management to get away - yet again - with causing a disruption and shifting the blame elsewhere. --- How did the pilots get such high salaries? Perhaps by negotiating professionally with incompetent managers? ALL unions, no matter what area, do the best they can for their members - nurses, pilots, labourers, dock workers, no matter who - and if they could get a million dollars a year for any or all of them then it is the management who is to blame, not the uinion or employees.
On Pilots may step up action if salaries are docked
Posted 8 January 2015, 3:14 p.m. Suggest removal
bimjim says...
I would rather suggest gross mismanagement - and gross political stupidity. Only with a team of incompetent managers would a company prefer to face disruption of service and the possibility of millions of dollars in lost revenue, expenses and uncountable lost good will of customers instead of negotiating in good faith with professionals who, if turned against the company, could bankrupt the airline with very little effort - and certainly in ways in which they cannot be prosecuted.
.
Bahamasair needs its pilots to be in good humour, not angry.
.
I would also suggest their curtrent salaries certainly were not handed to them on a platter, those amounts were negotiated with an incompenent team of managers over the years. You only get what your union fights for, and it appears management were not up to running a financially viable ship.
.
As to wasting money, ask those management types what THEIR salaries are - they are certainly getting close to double or triople what the highest paid pilot is paid. And I bet they enjoyed a whack of a Christmas bonus, too.
.
So stop kicking them pilots... as professionals they did not walk off the job just because they felt like it, they did so because they were driven to take industrial action when there was no alternative.
.
I have seen it before myself, so nobody can tell me that's not possible. Take a management which is unqualified, rude and ignorant, and they will believe they know better and can do better than anyone else. They also cannot count - negotiating a reasonable salary increase would probably not have cost Bahamasair what this strike has so far, including the loss of goodwill in its passengers.
.
Finally, don't believe everything you read in the Press. It is unliklely that the pilot union "demanded" 7% a year, more like they presented a 7% offer as the beginning of a negotiation - where the other side does the same. An arrogant, ignorant and incompetent management would be the kind of people to see the standard beginning of any negotiation as the sound of the bell to come out swinging at whatever moves.
On Bahamasair's strike payout $758k and counting
Posted 5 January 2015, 9:09 p.m. Suggest removal
bimjim says...
So just clarify for me... in The Bahamas the Deputy Prime Minister has the LEGAL authority to be Judge, Jury and Executioner?
Because, according to this article, he has already decided that the pilots have no right to either industrial action or due process, and has already set in place a punishment for their actions.
If you Bahamian folks don't want your taxes to pay huge legal bills and an even larger financial court award, you should get somebody - the Prime Minister?? - to talk to this political idiot quickly and get him to clean up his act.
On Deputy PM 'has given directions' for Bahamasair pilot punishment
Posted 2 January 2015, 9:03 p.m. Suggest removal