A well-known pilot turned lawyer is urging the government to speedily create an international aircraft registry for The Bahamas.

Llewellyn Boyer-Cartwright is a part of the consultative committee the government formed last year to create the Bahamas International Aircraft Registry, but believes that the recent tragedy in Mayaguana is even more reason for the government to move faster in bringing the registry to reality.

“The committee is making good progress, but what we have to do now is establish what it takes to create and complete the framework for how the registry will be administered and managed, what fees will be charged and whether or not it will be part of the Bahamas Maritime Authority based in London or a separate entity,” he said.

“I’ve been fortunate to meet with pioneers who have led the way in registries. The more I see, the more I am convinced that The Bahamas can do this and do it well, attracting an entirely new group of high net worth individuals who may very well end up being second home owners and investing in other ways in The Bahamas all because they were introduced to the country through the aircraft registry.”

Mr. Boyer-Cartwright has been in the industry for a while and has traveled to five international aviation conferences in the past year.

He believes The Bahamas still has a window of opportunity to create an international aircraft registry that will attract the quality individual and corporate executive jet and private aircraft market.

“But our window of opportunity is narrowing as more and more countries realise the potential of a registry,” he said.

Mr. Boyer-Cartwright said Aruba, Bermuda, The Cayman Islands, Malta, Isle of Man and now Guernsey are all appreciating the value that offering an electronic registry brings to the full menu of provision of financial services to attract high net worth individuals.

“I would like The Bahamas to move judiciously but quickly so that we can take advantage of this window of opportunity before it is too late and we end up playing catch up,” he said.

“Last week’s tragedy in Mayaguana brings into sharp relief the other need for such a registry because an international registry cannot exist without the country being committed to establishing and maintaining International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) standards for safety at international airports. Those standards encompass everything from lighting to runway maintenance to having working firefighting equipment to emergency plans.”

“It covers air traffic controllers and the equipment in the control towers and much more that we cannot continue to ignore and hope that luck will carry us through, especially now given the need to increase air traffic to this country in a way that we have never done before in order to fill all the new hotel capacity that will be available by the end of 2014.”
The Mayaguana airport runway accident that occurred last week claimed the lives of three persons.