NASSAU, BAHAMAS – Bahamasair managing director Tracy Cooper says the airline’s jets that were blocked from flying to the United States earlier this month, will be outfitted with the necessary upgrades by the end of the week.
Cooper told Eyewitness News the airline had ‘never lost a step’.
Despite reports, Cooper insisted the airline had never lost a step and had a ‘game plan’ to service the routes.
Bahamasair’s three older 737-500 jets were unable to fly to the US on January 1, because they were not fitted with the necessary flight tracking technology required by industry regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Bahamasair claimed that its initial supplier had failed to deliver on the tech and had informed it at very late stage of its inability to do so.
Cooper said: “Just to inform the public we would like to say Bahamasair actually started to outfit the aircraft with ADS-B. The first one is in maintenance right now. We will be finished by the end of this week. The aircraft will be able to start to fly into the US by the end of this week.
“Contrary to what is being said in the public, Bahamasair never lost a step because of the ADS-B issue,” he said.
“We always had a game plan as to how we would service the routes and we continued to do that without any interruption.”
In May 2010, the FAA issued Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations which requires ADS-B Out performance when operating in designated classes of airspace within the US National Airspace System (NAS) after January 1, 2020, unless authorized by air traffic control (ATC).
