Airline’s salary costs at least eight percent above industry average
NASSAU, BAHAMAS — Bahamasair Chairman Tommy Turnquest said yesterday the airline will reintroduce its early retirement program as it looks at ways to cut and control costs, noting that the airline’s salary cost is eight percent above the industry average.
“We are looking at cutting costs, cost containment and cost-control factors,” said Turnquest.
“The last thing we want to do is furlough or lay off staff. Bahamasair, through attrition, retirements, through changing our business model and our schedule, we are now down to 550 employees.
“The salary cost, though, is still too high for Bahamasair. The industry average is around 24 percent and we are around 32 percent. We’d like to get a little lower. We don’t plan to have any mass layoffs or furloughs.”
He added: “We are looking at an early retirement program. We had a voluntary program prior to the pandemic and we’re going to look at that again.”
Turnquest noted that Bahamasair currently has around 140 employees who are 55 years and over, with average tenure at the airline being around 20 years.
He also noted that the airline has not yet seen any cancellations in light of new US entry requirements by the Biden administration in response to COVID-19.
“We haven’t seen any cancellations per se. We also haven’t seen an uptick,” said Turnquest.
“We had an uptick in December which saw our revenues grow almost double from what it was in November prior to Thanksgiving. If you look at the four weeks prior to Thanksgiving and you look at the four weeks from Thanksgiving to Christmas, we saw almost 100 percent uptick.
“That gives us cause to be optimistic, but when you compare that period to the 12 months before, that was only 25 to 30 percent. We still are extremely challenged.”
Turnquest added: “We engaged a Cuban wholesaler in South Florida and in November and December we saw a real uptick in terms of our travel into Cuba. We were going into Cuba six days a week.
“The week of Christmas, Cuban officials said effective January 1 they were changing entry requirements and that dropped off from six times a week to once a week.
“We are looking at whatever we can do. We understand the challenges Bahamasair is facing but we are also looking at opportunities.
“We haven’t had a domestic airfare increase in eight years and we have done that [but] it’s still very early to tell the effect of that because you’re not comparing apples to apples; we now have a reduced passenger load.”
