Bahamasair officials have admitted that only four of the airline’s seven aircraft are likely to meet an April 9 deadline set by federal regulators in the United States for the installation of bulletproof cockpit doors.
The new requirements were put in place after the September 2001 terror attacks on the United States when terrorists hijacked four commercial planes, crashing two into the World Trade Centre in New York, one into the Pentagon just outside Washington, D.C., and another in a field in Pennsylvania.
Bahamasair Chief Operating Officer Charles Beneby said that the airline had run into some difficulties in getting the doors.
“If we don’t, we will not be able to operate our aircraft into the United States after April 9,” Mr. Beneby said.
“The Federal Aviation Administration has not given any operator’s foreign operators or US an extension, so the April deadline is hard.”
Bahamasair currently has five Dash-8 aircraft and two jets. A bulletproof cockpit door for each aircraft costs $23,000.
Mr. Beneby said that all of the Dash-8 doors have arrived and will be installed beginning Thursday.
He said that with the help of FAA officials, each door will take about two days to be installed.
“The goal is to meet the April 9 deadline,” he said. “We only recently received the doors because of the paper work coming from the FAA to the manufactures, but we have those doors for the Dash-8’s on hand now and we suspect that the jet doors will come in this week also.” Bahamasair Managing Director Paul Major was confident that Bahamasair would make the deadline.
“It’s very important for us,” Mr. Major said. “I’m sure we are going to be ready.”
Cockpit doors have been designed to provide a quiet working environment for pilots.
Last August, airlines were given 90 days to secure cockpit doors with deadbolt locks and 18 months to install intrusion proof doors.
However, many airlines had said that that mandate had posed engineering challenges. They said that bulkheads had to be strengthened and electrical systems integrated.
The doors themselves have to be heavy enough to be bulletproof but not too heavy to weigh down the plane. They also have to allow pilots to be able to exit easily in an emergency and allow air to blow through the cabin in case of rapid decompression.
A Boeing bulletproof door costs as much as $29,000 and takes about 14 hours to replace.
The FAA says it is still studying whether to require the doors on small commuter planes. As for the vast majority of the airline fleet that needs the new doors, the FAA has acknowledged they are not a perfect solution.
The Bahama Journal
