D’Aguilar: Aviation legislation could produce lucrative aircraft registry

When a compendium of aviation bills are passed to help improve The Bahamas’ safety oversight audit score –which Minister of Tourism and Aviation Dionisio D’Aguilar said yesterday is one of the lowest in the region – then this country could begin to benefit from the lucrative aircraft registry industry.

D’Aguilar, who opened the debate on the bills yesterday, said this industry could become “quite lucrative for The Bahamas as a value-added service to wealthy second-home owners”. 

Safety oversight audit scores are generated by the Universal Safety Oversight Audit Programme (USOAP) of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The objective of USOAP is to promote global aviation safety by regularly auditing ICAO member states to determine whether the critical elements of a safety oversight system have been implemented effectively. 

“A 31.98 score puts us at the bottom of the list of Caribbean countries and we should, as a country, desire to vastly improve that score,” D’Aguilar said.

“Other than wanting to not be the jurisdiction with one of the lowest scores in the region, another critical reason why we need to improve this score is if we still intend to launch an aircraft registry.

“An aircraft registry is a natural add-on business that The Bahamas can find quite lucrative in much the same way that our ship registry has generated healthy returns over the years.”

D’Aguilar said the registry could generate fee income for the government and lawyers and create jobs in aircraft maintenance and storage. He added that there would also be fees generated by airports, inspectors and fuel providers when private aircraft traffic to the country increases.

 “An aircraft registry is an excellent value-added service to offer wealthy second-home owners and financial services clients and given that we are an English-speaking common law state with a stable democracy and an established, functioning legal system, studies show that establishing an aircraft registry in The Bahamas will be quite lucrative,” D’Aguilar said.

However, he contended that without the changes brought through the passage of legislation, the country’s safety oversight audit score cannot change.

The bills, which were tabled last week, seek to remove Part VII from the Civil Aviation Act, 2016, which contained provisions for the “investigation and prevention of air accidents”; separate the provision of air navigation services by the air traffic controllers – who are currently embedded in the Civil Aviation Authority as the Bahamas Air Navigation Services Department – into their own authority; develop the foundation for The Bahamas’ Search and Rescue Coordination Centre (SRCC), which will provide improvements to this country’s search and rescue capabilities; and seek to modernize and ensure the timeliness of the regulation-making and amendment processes for the industry.

“No one wants to register their aircraft in a jurisdiction with a safety oversight audit score of 31.98 percent – one of the lowest in the region and certainly far lower than the jurisdictions where competing aircraft registry services are currently being offered,” D’Aguilar said.

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source https://thenassauguardian.com/daguilar-aviation-legislation-could-produce-lucrative-aircraft-registry/