apr-2017c

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AT A GLANCE
interCaribbean
Airways
WHAT: A regional airline and group
of air services companies
WHERE: Providenciales, Turks and
Caicos Islands
WEBSITE:
later we were having the same conversation about me
always being missing on a Friday. So I said to him, ‘Well, I
don’t have an airplane.”And he said, ‘How much does that
cost?’ It was about twenty-something thousand dollars,
so I said, ‘I have six thousand and could he lend me the
difference?’ I guess I was a good employee - he agreed to
lend me the money. I bought my first airplane and I con-
tinued to work for the bank and do some flying.
“One Friday afternoon at the airport, where the residents
and local people hang out, a friend who owned a photo
studio said, ‘There’s a billfish tournament, tomorrow.Why
don’t you take me out in the airplane? You can take the
door off, fly low and slow. I’ll get some pictures and I’ll
compensate you for the costs.’ So, I agreed and the next
morning we flew about thirty or forty minutes and turned
around and came back. He got the pictures he wanted
and when we landed, he gave me five hundred bucks. It
was the crispiest five hundred dollars I had ever seen. So, I
interCaribbean Airways
called my manager and told him, ‘I quit.’
He was not very happy about that, and
called in his loan. That meant I was com-
pletely on my own.
“Back in the day, I would hang out at
the airport and operate a sort of taxi
service. I was not properly licensed at
the time; I was a private pilot. But, we’d
all be out there on the hustle - getting
passengers and taking them to the other
islands, which were not very far from
one another. On one of my trips back, I
met the Deputy Director of Civil Aviation
and, as I was coming off the airplane,
he warned me about taking passengers
for hire. Of course I told him that these
people that I had were all friends and
family and people that I knew forever. He
questioned all three people I was flying
in my Cessna 172, and no one agreed
with him that I was getting paid. So, he
told me, ‘Look, I’ll make a deal with you,
because if anything happens to this
airplane, you’re in trouble and we’re in
trouble.’ I said, ‘I can understand why I’ll
be in trouble, but why would you be in
trouble?’ He said, ‘Because we’re from
the CAA and we’re supposed to be pro-
tecting the public interest and it would
not look that we were protecting the
public interest if we just allow you to fly
around without a proper air operator’s
certificate.’ So, he said, ‘You come to my
office and I’ll show you what you need to
trevor sadler, CEO
lyndon r. gardiner, chairman