Richard A. Asper J.D.

Rick Asper, chairman of the Aviation Professionals Group based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. represents the sole owner of the project, Ron Henricksen, and said the airport will induce new business and industry, increase property value for growth of industries near the airport, and generate tax revenue for nearby cities.
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Asper said that there is not a specific completion date for the privately funded airport, but the building phase usually lasts 18 months after the application is approved.A decision by the FAA is expected in early April.
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Asper said the 7,000-foot by 100-foot runway surface with two runway approaches can handle, but will not serve regularly scheduled commercial flights.

"The runway is long enough, wide enough and thick enough to accommodate commercial aircraft, but airliners are not his (Henricksen's) market," he said.

Asper said there have been past efforts to construct corporate airports in or near Houston, but to no avail.He added that the need for corporate airports near a metropolitan city like Houston is long overdue.

"It has been dramatically proven by developers, by economists and by politicians that one of the necessary elements for a metropolitan area to grow economically is an adequate number of airports that will serve aviation needs.The western enclaves of Houston have been bereaved of that need for several decades, and that accounts for the numerous efforts to build a corporate airport in that region over the last 20 years.Those efforts failed because they required public funding, which is both problematic and time-consuming," Asper said.

Richard Asper(954)763-4848http://www.aviation-professionals.com/

Avia
tion Resource ManagementFranklin Lakes, NJ

Theoretically there is no fundamental disagreement with opinions attributed to Mr. Richard Asper, Chairman of Aviation Professionals Group as reported in the February 2, 2005 edition of the Tribune, however, the premise of the Government continuing to own 50% of the airline is flawed.It has always been the expressed position of the Government to reduce its stake in the national flag carrier to 25-30% with the long term view of further selling down or even completely selling off the rest of its interest to local investors.It was always intended that Bahamian private and institutional investors would own a substantial stake in the national flag carrier.The Government is under no illusion as to fictitious equity resident in the airline and fully appreciates that the only real value that accrues to a national flag carrier is route rights in our case, our safety record.

Interestingly, Mr. Asper did not address the issue of qualifying as a national flag carrier under US Department of Transportation (DOT) regulations which is critical to a Bahamian national flag carrier since the US is a critical market for air traffic to and from the Bahamas which is likely to continue to be the case.We are reliably advised that unless a country can demonstrate that there is a scarcity of capital and/or talent resident in the home country, thereby necessitating a greater than 49% foreign ownership, foreign control and management and that the existence of same would not be inimical to US aviation interests, national flag carrier status will not be granted by the DOT.We can only assume that Mr. Asper is either unaware or is ignoring the many precedents established in this regard whereby the DOT had to provide waiver exemptions for certain carriers to be so designated e.g. Spanair S.A. March 27, 2000, Cargolux Airlines International, S.A. March 7, 2002, Aeromodelo, S.A. de C.V. May 25, 2004, G5 Executive A.G. July 1, 2003.