The Bahamasair ATR plane wrecked in a freak storm that spawned a tornado has been declared a write-off by ATR engineers, the chairman of the airline told Guardian Business yesterday. The company expects receipt of a new ATR by the end of June.
Valentine Grimes said the $20 million aircraft will be replaced through the company's insurance, and ensured that the aircraft was fully covered for the type of incident that caused irreparable damage.
He added that Bahamasair would not require any funds from the government. The old aircraft will belong to the insurance company when the damaged airplane is replaced.
"The conclusion was that we will replace the plane with a completely new plane, which we are in the process of doing and it is anticipated that the new plane will be available for us in late June of this year," said Grimes.
"Whatever the weather conditions were, that was covered under our insurance."
ATR engineers came from both Miami and ATR's headquarters in France last month to assess the damaged plane and make their recommendations.
Grimes added that the new ATR will cost Bahamasair much less given that pilots will not have to be trained in France. He said ATR opened a new simulator in Miami and therefore it will cost Bahamasair much less to train pilots.
"They (ATR) agreed to provide the new aircraft for the same basic price, less some of the add-on services that we do not need this time, as we now have the capacity to train our pilots," he said.
"They will still have to do simulator training at an ATR facility, but now that they just last month opened one in Miami, that will significantly reduce the traveling time for pilot training, as opposed to going to France. This again will represent a good savings for us at Bahamasair."
He said ATR is a partner of Bahamasair and "fully understood the predicament we found ourselves in" with regard to the storm-damaged plane.
Grimes said despite Bahamasair missing one plane from its fleet, the typically busy Easter weekend will be adequately covered, as long as all of Bahamasair's other planes stay in service.
"We should be able to cover the demand," he said.

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