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runwayrunway · 1 year ago

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No. 45 - BermudAir

Sometimes, when I'm especially bored at work, I find myself idly checking to see if there are any interesting planes at Logan Airport. It's common to see an MD-11 or A380, but every once in a while we get Blueprint, for example, or Vatnajökull or Hekla Aurora, or the Blackpink plane, and I always have my fingers crossed one day Xáat Kwáani will be there.

Today, the 23rd of August, I opened FlightRadar24 and was startled to see we were graced with the presence of a British Midland Embraer E175.

What is an airline which hasn't existed since 2012 doing operating a flight to an airport it never served using a type it never flew? Well, disappointingly, they aren't.

As far as consolation prizes go, though, I'm perfectly happy with a brand new airline to discuss.

So I'm reasonably sure what happened here is that BermudAir is using British Midland's old ICAO designator, BMA, and FlightRadar hasn't updated its data to match yet. They do this. I regularly get a kick out of the fact that their map insists Cape Air's Tecnam P2012s are jets.

Regardless, it was a good way to grab my attention! When I say BermudAir is new I do mean brand new - as in, they haven't flown a single revenue flight yet. Their plan is to begin service to Boston Logan and Westchester County Airport (located just north of New York City) on the 31st of August and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood on the 15th of September, connecting all three destinations with Bermuda's L.F. Wade International Airport.

So let's take a look at this girl, temporarily local to me! This is VQ-BLU, but you can call her Topsey, which is an adorable name. She's an eleven-year-old Embraer E175, formerly of Flybe. And wow, is she tropical. Fort Lauderdale is one thing, but just imagine this plane parked in Boston in the middle of a blizzard. Oh, no...it'd just be her bright little tail poking out in a sheet of white...

If you look closer you can see that the interior of the winglet is a very washed out blue with the BermudAir logo on it.

She's vibrant! She's tropical! I love this design, obviously. It would be difficult not to. It's just...visually pleasing, right? It's bright and pink and colourful and gorgeous. While I initially thought this design was sort of familiar I think it might just be a very popular style, because if it's actually taken from a specific preexisting piece rather than commissioned for BermudAir it's certainly not one I could identify. Anyway, it looks nice.

...wish they'd painted the rest of the plane, though.

So this is VQ-BLW, Willy to her friends. If the names Topsey and Willy have any particular origin, it's not one I'm aware of, but as always I prefer named airplanes to unnamed ones. Willy is also eleven years old and a Flybe veteran, and is currently parked at Muskoka, presumably waiting to be ferried to her new home.

One thing I do quite like is the degree to which the design changes depending on the lighting. This sort of fuchsia is great for that. It looks pastel in the light and luminescent in the shadow, but never looks washed out or dusty. The composition of the blues and pink is absolutely beautiful.

For a minute there I thought the engines had some sort of pink design which made me think of a flower for some reason, but upon closer inspection it appears to just be an engine cover lashed on with ropes of a similar dusty pink colour. This is a shame. More airlines need to do creative things with their nacelles. Even if they're subtle, it can make a huge difference when you consider it's one of the most foreground things period when seeing the plane from the side.

That's a shame. Oh, well.

As for the primarily white portion of the body, it could be worse. They've chosen a tolerable sans serif, and they've made it dark grey rather than black to avoid it looking too harsh and out-of-place. I also like the location beneath the window-line, something more typical of turboprops which I think adds a nice bit of variety when done in large text on a jet like this. The stylized A in the logo and Topsey's name are both rendered in cyan, keeping some of that tropical energy throughout the airframe. That said, while the text is quite legible (the generous but not excessive space between letters and the size it's printed in are both excellent) I really wish the cyan-on-white was a bit easier to read.

While somehow the abstract nature of the tail design combined with the massive wordmark at the front prevents the plane from feeling lopsided as many similar layouts do, I still think this could be improved. Beyond the simple fact that it's boring, I distinctly dislike the very luxury-hotel feeling of combined tropical colors and sterile white. That sort of thing has always given me the ick, and also just feels unsure of what it wants to be. Are you having fun or are you going to perform a surgery? Are we a bunch of businessmen in suits having their meeting inside of a hot tub drinking Mai Tais or are we a group of seven to ten college-aged girls with modest Instagram followings playing beach volleyball in a conference room? You can't be both.

But, I mean...in terms of vacation branding, this is about as standard as you get. This is every big resort on St. John's and every luxury cruise to the extremely teal oceans of some archipelago somewhere. So despite my personal distaste for the style in general I have to admit this is a well done instance of it. That art on the tail really is nice, it really just is. I wish I knew who the artist was, because they know their way around a color palette.

So how do we...well, I don't want to say fix this, because I do think it gets the job done. I think I need to reframe my phrasing for this and future reviews: how do we make this an A? And I don't know. There's the obvious, extending the design to the whole plane, but I don't even think you need to go that far. A bit of light colored remnant trailing off into the rest of the plane, maybe a shift for the fuselage itself from pure white to a dusty pink or cyan...or, if you commit to the idea of the beach, both, for a sunset over an ocean. Add something to the engines, you might have something!

But this livery is already kind of admittedly more than adequate. I feel like people who are more receptive to this...vibe than I am would really rate this. And that isn't not a factor in my decisions. I don't just base these off aesthetics, or my rating for Saudia wouldn't be what it is. There's a degree of...trying, here, and a degree of succeeding, even. I do think it's well designed even though it reminds me of the little bottles of shampoo you get at hotels.

So, um...B-, I think. That's what I'm going with for the moment - could someone please "accidentally" get some grapefruit juice on the front fuselage, though? Just as a favor to me.

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Okay, wow, Runway Runway. Nice post, but uh...is this really what took you so long to finish? And don't you normally give some background on the airline you're talking about? Is this some sort of joke?

Well...no. I wanted to put the review in the start of the post for a couple of reasons, but I'd appreciate if you continue reading for some background on BermudAir. There's a lot about the airline that requires some pretty extensive context, and I think it would be actively irresponsible not to talk about. The rest of this post is going to be long, but that's for a good reason, so please bear with me.

BermudAir is actually a milestone - Bermuda's first airline, apparently. I was startled to learn this, and it made me pretty excited. Bermuda is a British Overseas Territory - this is to say, a colony of the English Empire which even in the modern day has not gained its independence and retains the King of England as its head of state despite being self-governed in every practical sense of the term. It would be fantastic to see Bermuda establish its own flag carrier, to have more of its own infrastructure, and just broadly more to call its own that isn't imposed by the British Empire.

And that's when this stopped really being a normal Runway Runway post.

I was surprised to learn that BermudAir is the first airline in Bermuda's history. It turns out that's because it isn't true - though it might appear that way until you roll up your sleeves and root around in the compost bin of publicly available records. While Bermuda's Bermuda Civil Aviation Authority (BCAA) has issued Air Operator Certificates (AOC) multiple times in the past, most were for startups that fell through. People have been trying and failing now for literal decades to make an airline stick. But while no scheduled passenger airlines have gotten off the ground, BermudAir is not the literal first airline in Bermuda. Leisure and charter airline Freedom II appears to mostly fly to Anguilla and is headquartered in Florida but is registered in Bermuda, and supposedly an airline called Brisair also operated from Bermuda but Planespotters.net says it's Swiss and all photos seem to be from Finland, and they don't appear to so much as have a website, so...I'm not sure. I don't even know if Brisair is still in operation. There's also charter and cargo airline Longtail Aviation, which made the news in 2021 when one of its planes disgorged a few assorted engine gubbins while flying over the Netherlands.

This is at least two and potentially three things operating in Bermuda which I would definitely describe as airlines, so BermudAir is not the first Bermudian airline! They appear to be the first Bermuda-founded airline to operate scheduled service to Bermuda, and will be the only one to operate year-round service from the island, but that isn't the same thing as being the first Bermudian airline. You can't just say things that aren't true! And even the government seems to be repeating this.

"We are very happy to welcome BermudAir as Bermuda's first carrier, as they work toward setting a new standard for travel," Bermuda's Minister of Transport Wayne Furbert said in a statement celebrating the carrier's launch. "This partnership represents an exciting milestone for our island, as it enhances connectivity and strengthens our position as a premier destination. With BermudAir's commitment to providing convenient connections, we anticipate a significant boost to our tourism market."

And this just feels wrong. The Bermudian government's enthusiasm about this project doesn't actually fill me with very much optimism given the context in which they're saying this and in which BermudAir exists.

All of what I'm going to say right now is incredibly oversimplified and I don't have the necessary background to not oversimplify it, so keep in mind these are very broad statements and that for a better picture you would need to seek out Bermudian writers. But even my simple version is pretty long, and a little bit technical. All of my sources are going to be at the bottom of this post and I'm sure there's a lot I've overlooked, so if you have anything to add or correct please do so. This said, BermudAir is not for Bermudians.

The flag of Bermuda. Pay close attention to the best coat of arms I have ever seen in my life. Can you imagine how good this would look without the Union Jack cluttering it up?

Bermuda is a very 'prosperous' place, a statement which is deeply misleading. It has a colossal GDP, driven not by any domestic industry but from its status as one of the world's best-reviewed tax havens. Indeed, tariffs imposed by the US have essentially meant that agricultural exports are a nonstarter as an economic pursuit and their wealth comes instead from tourism and thousands of foreign businesses with no real connection to Bermuda flocking there to take advantage of the almost nonexistent taxes.[10]

At various points anywhere between 20 and 30 percent of those residing in the country have not held Bermudian status. This is a term that should be clarified upfront. Bermudians, and anyone born in Bermuda, are British nationals but do not have British citizenship. They instead have 'British Overseas Territories Citizenship', which does not confer the rights associated with actual citizenship, such as that of work or abode. Many Bermudians accordingly do not consider themselves to be British.[17]

However, there exists a local 'citizenship' called Bermudian Status. Bermudian Status is given to those with at least one parent who holds Bermudian status, or by formal government award. It is not given to those born on Bermudian soil, cannot be bought, and is very difficult to obtain if not born into. I have literally never seen such stringent requirements for a citizenship in my life, and this does actually have meaningful consequences. Rights such as those to work, own businesses, obtain scholarships, and vote are restricted to those with Bermudian status. They also cannot purchase property - with one exception.[17]

All of the above sounds pretty horrible, and I'm sure it sometimes is, but it needs to be taken in the context it exists in. Bermuda is an incredibly popular tax haven for the ultrawealthy[10] and accordingly flocked to by nationals of other countries. Although Archibald[17] makes it out as if there is some sort of epidemic of arbitrarily disenfranchised Bermudian-born individuals this doesn't actually seem to be true, as 97% of those born on Bermudian soil actually do hold Bermudian status, as do 31% of those born elsewhere.[18] It may be difficult to obtain, and that may well be a problem, but this does not appear to be an epidemic of people disenfranchised from birth, which does exist elsewhere. For instance, former USSR citizens in Latvia and Estonia were not granted citizenship and many remain functionally stateless, and residents of American Samoa are considered US nationals but not citizens. This makes them, among other things, ineligible for any government benefits for disability or medical care.

These people without Bermudian status aren't just stateless, though. They hold the same British Overseas Territories Citizenship as Bermudians, and may well hold others - for instance, those born on US military bases are US birthright citizens. The majority of these non-Bermudians are foreign-born and thus presumably hold a different citizenship. And citizenships can be something pretty lopsided. A US, UK, or EU passport holds an absolutely outsized amount of power and convenience when it comes to free travel and may entitle you to myriad benefits from said governments. I know a lot of people with dual citizenships who have no love whatsoever for the US or UK but keep their passports because life without one is measurably harder. And think of it this way: a non-Bermudian living in Bermuda is less like someone born in American Samoa, who has no nationality other than the US but cannot vote or derive government benefits, and a little bit more like a permanent resident, who can't vote, a system had by just about every country.

And there's probably a reason Bermuda is so stingy about Bermudian status. I'll be honest, it's pretty telling that unlike many other jurisdictions Bermuda doesn't allow one to pay their way into citizenship. I'm sure some people want that to be the case, given the demographics of non-Bermudians in Bermuda, but the distinction between people actually from Bermuda and those who are just using it for a tax break is actually meaningful. I'm sure there are people genuinely harmed by this law, but there's one more thing I need to point out: non-Bermudians are allowed to own land. The only restriction is that they're limited to the most expensive 5% of it. This sends a pretty clear message about who non-Bermudians are.

Since agriculture is mostly a non-starter and so much of the country is foreigners, aside from tax breaks and registering yachts Bermuda's main industry, particularly for employment of locals, is tourism. The need to satisfy tourists makes everything else frequently secondary to avoid upsetting the fulcrum of the economy and can impede efforts of worker's unions. What taxes do exist are placed on workers and end consumers rather than those who own businesses and property. The majority of taxes come from customs, and though payroll is taxed personal income is not, meaning that all income tax is paid off of wage labor and none off of personal accumulated capital. Land tax does exist, but makes up the smallest portion of tax income.[4] The cost of living is commensurate with the GDP and benefits for the elderly and disabled are notably lacking[13]; most disabled and elderly residents are Black[11].

As with many places with a similar history under colonial rule, Bermuda has an extensive history of violent racial oppression and the effects are still clearly seen today. According to the most recent data I could find, admittedly from 2012, though Black Bermudians make up the majority of the population their average income is 22% lower than that of White Bermudians and their median income 30% lower[1]. While I don't have the data on hand, just the analysis the government itself published, my assumption would be that this means that, though the wealthiest Black Bermudians still make less than the wealthiest white Bermudians, they are still significantly pushing up the average, and a heavily disproportionate number of Black Bermudians make up the ranks of the absolute most impoverished Bermudians.

Most tellingly, from my own perspective, non-Bermudians have a 20% higher median income than Bermudians of any race, and this is increasing at a higher rate than that of Bermudians as well. In the past decade the greatest increase has been seen by non-Bermudian women, and the least by Bermudian men, suggesting that the gender gap is slowly closing while the nationality gap is widening[1]. The Tax Justice Network's 2018 report notes that the Bermudian government has 'conspicuously' never produced a study of income inequality and does not provide equivalized numbers, which makes it difficult to properly derive true numbers and compare to other countries. Still, here is what they found:

While while wages did rise between 2008 and 2016, the highest-earning only just kept up with inflation while those earning lower wages have, in real terms, had their earnings fall by 5%. Although clerical jobs are low-paying compared to the (very inflated) average, they're doing fantastic compared to the 32% drop seen by workers in Agriculture & Fisheries.[4] While in countries like the United States these jobs are primarily sloughed off to migrants with little to no recourse against poor treatment and pitiful wages, in Bermuda these jobs are presumably similar in implementation but half of them are worked by native Bermudans.[4] Black Bermudians are the majority of the workforce, yet 65% of those in managerial and professional occupations are white.[11] This means that most of the people having their wages functionally decrease were Black, further exacerbating the racial wealth gap.

When comparing average to median income Bermuda has some of the highest income inequality in the entire world, comparable to that of the United States and worse than that of London.[4] That is unbelievably dire, especially given how often Bermuda is represented as some sort of poverty-free paradise when attempting to galvanise tourism among the US's upper classes.

As for independence, a referendum was actually held in 1995, and the prospect was defeated by 74%, with a worryingly low voter turnout of 59%. While this clears the required bar of 40% of eligible voters opposing independence, it is still not an inspiring number. Apparently this is fairly normal, with only 60% of eligible voters registered[13] and reliably low turnout[10] suggesting this is the norm rather than the exception. This becomes all the grimmer when a Cabinet Minister "[...] compare[s] the Country to a business that had prospered under Bermudian management". Additionally, said Minister "had detected 'a shift in attitude' against blacks in the UBP. Caucus members who she would not name felt 'too many concessions were being made for black people,' and Government was doing too much to level the playing field.'"[2] Bermuda has for most of its history been ruled by a conservative party which remained in power despite being supported primarily by the white minority, and has had consistently low voter turnout[11]. Their Governor is still appointed by the English Crown, and in 2020 Bermuda was generously granted its first ever Black Governor! She is not, however, a Black Bermudian, and in fact many in the government expressed displeasure at the fact that Bermuda is still not independent, calling for at least a Deputy Governor who is actually from Bermuda, and mentioning that they had been asking for a Black Governor for a majority Black society twenty entire years ago![12]

Now pair that with the knowledge that the Governor appoints the Premier and Senate as well and that these positions are held until the Crown decides otherwise and that racial wealth disparity begins to make more sense. Legal power is concentrated in the same hands it has since its inception as a British Territory, that of wealthy white Britons. It didn't surprise me to learn where the opposition to independence came from. "The powerful families who control much of the island's commerce wish the issue of independence would simply go away," wrote Aline Sullivan for the International Herald Tribune in the leadup to the referendum. From the same article: "One private trust manager, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that if Bermuda became independent, the financial community would 'have to rethink everything. Unless we are careful, we may start losing business' to the Cayman Islands and elsewhere, the manager said. 'People may not think of us if we can no longer market Bermuda as a British colony.'"[3] It seems blatant, reading over this, that while there was a genuine push for independence by the primarily Black permanent population, the question for the actual government was always one of optics and how best to cater to the financial giants using Bermuda as a tool.

The takeaway from this is that Bermuda's wealth is not generated via authentic economic prosperity but by offshore banking conducted by already-wealthy individuals born elsewhere exploiting the country's permissive tax laws, while those who are truly Bermudian have essentially no choice but to lean heavily on tourism as a source of income. Bermuda is not unique in this sense, but it surprised me they'd never so much as had a national airline. That's right, this is a blog about airlines. As best I can tell, this is because it's a particularly popular destination for yachts, and presumably nobody in a position to start an airline ever wondered about whether things should be made a little easier for the yachtless underclasses. When I heard this was going to be the first airline founded in Bermuda, I foolishly assumed that it would be an attempt at a flag carrier to make travel to and from Bermuda broadly more accessible.

Oh, and as for the concerning lack of figures - Bermuda appears to be ridiculously understudied. Although plenty has been written on the wildlife and ecology, and in some specific fields like midwifery, I had a very hard time finding detailed studies of the population and for each useful thing I found I also got around seven articles about marine invertebrates and occasionally something like this.

So if people have done analyses of the publicly available census data, or research of their own, most of it is in places where my student-going-into-archival-science's ability to use databases and my university's JSTOR credentials can't reach. And, well, that's bad. It's pretty bad that aside from the sources I'm using the only thing I could find was one study conducted on seniors' ability to access healthcare. It's not great, by the way.

But that is literally not even why I'm meant to be here.

Okay, enough of the politics! Time for some business speculation! As an undergraduate history student I have even less authority to speak on this than I do on the history of Bermudian wealth inequality, so take this with an even larger grain of salt, but I'm going to spend a moment to discuss the most noteworthy thing about BermudAir - its business model.

BermudAir is a boutique airline which will operate nonstop flights to three destinations on the US East Coast from Bermuda year-round.

This is already a weird concept. To begin with, this isn't a service anyone is in dire need of. Although the only one of their three destinations which currently has a direct flight to Bermuda is Logan (operated daily by a jetBlue A220), flights from the East Coast are not lacking. Delta, United, JetBlue, and American Airlines all fly to Bermuda, and the fact that Westchester doesn't currently have one isn't strange given it's mostly a regional airport and the nearby JFK absolutely does have direct flights to Bermuda. This makes me think they may well be frozen out of business for half of the year. Sure, their passengers won't have to deal with seeing poor people at the airport, but they also won't be able to use their SkyMiles.

This service will be non-stop and year-round. Right now tickets are $199 or so, but when they get their planned cabins installed in November prices will immediately jump to quadruple digits.[6] (...this honestly makes me a little angry. That is an immense difference in price for a service that differs only in initial cost of installation.) This is because the entire airplane will be business-class only. This is actually pretty cheap for business class, apparently. I wouldn't know, I'm not really BermudAir's target audience. The Business Insider article opens with the phrase "Bermuda just got a little more accessible," which is really...a thing that they said in their article.

Business-class-only travel isn't unheard of or anything. Private jet rentals are a thing (for people willing to spend between tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars per hour) and carriers like Qatar Airways and British Airways have had similar models on a limited number of retrofitted planes. There's also La Compagnie, an airline which flies in an all-business-class configuration primarily Orly to Newark. And, I mean, that makes some sense, Paris to Newark is a popular route for business travelers...not sure about Boston to Bermuda.

image: Adam Moreira They're actually one of the airlines I wanted to talk about when I first started this blog. Still might do.

A 'boutique airline' is meant to be the equivalent of a boutique hotel - nice fluffy transport for wealthy business and leisure travelers. This definition gets a bit fuzzy - Asiana Airlines and TAP Air Portugal have both been described this way at least once, and that's definitely not true - but I think BermudAir has helped codify the definition. Though Bangkok Airways self-describes as such, I think airlines like BermudAir and La Compagnie are the true exemplar of the category. A luxury vacation airline that isn't quite renting a private jet or owning a yacht, but is still a luxury airline for luxury. There have been attempts at such before. David Neeleman, known recurring character of this blog, has been involved in two such ventures - Superior Air Charter (formerly JetSuite) and Climb. But those are just affordable jet cards with a Neeleman management style (Neelemanagement?). BermudAir and La Compagnie are fundamentally different. They've just eliminated economy class so they can fit more business class on the plane.

image: BermudAir Pay particular note to the pink mood lighting! Apparently it's meant to evoke the color of the sand on a Bermudian beach.

They refer to it as 'Aisle Class', because everyone gets both a window and an aisle seat (and enough storage space that overhead bins just aren't in the equation, which begs the question of...what if I want to put my things away?). 30 such 'suites' will be installed on each plane on the first of November, but for now passengers can pay a steep discount to fly in a normal cabin where only half the seats are actually sold. I don't know if this is a good business class cabin before, I've never flown business class as I'm not the sort of US national who has a bank account in Bermuda. The pillows have the same design as the airplane's livery, which is nice. An entire paragraph on the website is devoted to describing the luxury meals available to passengers. The real Bermuda experience - clean white walls and a Dark ‘n Stormy, am I right?

image: BermudAir

Hey, um...where are the leg rests? Do those seats even recline? I know this is a mock-up but...are there no seatback screens available? Seriously, what if I want to put my bag somewhere? I know checked bags are free, but I kind of...don't think I would want to do it anyway, because normally it's a waste of time when I can just toss my luggage into a bin large enough I could comfortably ride in it if they were out of seats. Also, are there not...seatbelts? Are passengers going to go flying into the seat in front of them every time the plane lands? Is any of this...even remotely crashworthy? Honestly, is it even comfortable? That's so many hard surfaces and just one little pillow and you can't even move the head-rest. This is worse than the average seat on ferries I've been on.

But enough about the interior! They don't even actually have it yet. What are they doing? In their own words, "BermudAir was created to provide frequent‚ well-timed and comfortable flights for business and premium leisure travellers between Bermuda and the East Coast of the U.S.". So...not much of a flag carrier, is it? That said, the government is pretty jazzed, according to Travel Market Report - it'll be fantastic for tourism, of course![5] Up to 18 weekly flights, and maybe even charters if the FAA allows it[6]. That is a stunningly large output for an airline just starting up with only two planes, and I am honestly afraid.

(And there is a bit of worry in my brain that I have no idea what sorts of regulations airlines with Bermudian AOCs are held to. Ben Schlappig of One Mile At A Time thought maybe the 30-passenger limit was to stay within Part 135 instead of the more restrictive Part 121, but that shouldn't matter as they aren't a US carrier - but what are they, then? Does Bermuda even have the necessary infrastructure to oversee a full-service air carrier with multiple regularly scheduled routes, or are they just going to let BermudAir do whatever it wants? That never ends well at all.)

That said, I'm also not sure it will work in the simplest sense. I'm kind of lost as to how putting less seats on an airplane will create more tourism. Founder Adam Scott claims that somehow their fleet of two E175s makes them equipped to serve the demand for the route, unlike airlines like Delta and American[7], which makes me wonder if he lives on a different planet. Delta and American have the two largest fleets in the entire world, plus regional subsidiaries, and they operate regional jets like the A220 and A319 which are both more efficient than an eleven-year-old E-Jet and filled to capacity. Besides, they have a little advantage called 'the ability to not cancel half their flights if one plane has a mechanical fault'. He also claims using Westchester Airport will save passengers time, and I'm just not too sure about that. Sure, JFK has delays on landing, but at least you don't have to then drive to New York City proper, if that's where you're going (and statistically speaking it probably is).

So how about that founder? His name is Adam Scott, so I will until told otherwise assume he is the same Adam Scott as the actor best known for his role as Jacques in my 7th-favorite Hellraiser movie, "Hellraiser IV: Bloodline" (1996).

If you think of Hellraiser: Bloodline as a Hellraiser film, it's really quite bad. But if you think of it as a Dr. Who special where people have their skin torn and warped in extremely graphic and upsetting ways, it's decent, I suppose. Did you know this was his first ever major role, by the way?

Jokes aside, this Adam Scott is Canadian and a former Goldman Sachs executive. He was among the people who worked on the now-discontinued British Airways business-class-only transatlantic A318 service, and after that ceased operation he became involved with similar startup Odyssey, which planned to replace it. They haven't made a peep since 2018 despite wanting to start service in 2020, but Scott does claim it still exists[7].

Well, I will have things to say about this if it ever launches, considering I now specifically hate this particular man.

Scott describes Bermuda as a 'mini version of London City with very similar demographics and a similar target audience',[7] which sort of made me laugh a little bit, although I'm not sure what emotion was primarily driving said laughter. This feels like a parody of a parody. But they're definitely way closer to being a reality than Odyssey, whether they can make enough money to keep it that way notwithstanding. Their chances are probably better than Global Airlines, at least. But hey, wait a minute...Bermudian airline, Canadian founder...weird, isn't it? I mean, who is this airline for?

image: BermudAir

I know, they said business and leisure travellers, but...isn't that so strange? 'Bermuda' is in the name, but the one year-round service to the US East Coast is going to be inaccessible to most of the people who live there, deliberately carrying as few people as possible!

image: BermudAir

This is actually a reminder that I needed - whenever I find something happening in the US to be cynical and disturbing, there is something out there even worse in a place I'm not supposed to care about. Breeze Airways having first class is pretty philosophically horrifying but at least they do still mostly sell affordable plane tickets. Azul leans quite heavily into its Brazilian branding, but David Neeleman is Brazilian, and their tickets are affordable and their service is accessible. That's just worlds apart from this! I've described flag carriers as being a service provided to a country, but this isn't that, and it's not even a product being sold to a country. This is an airline named BermudAir that Bermudians are just not meant to be involved with. I wonder if this is just something Scott never realized, or if he realized and doesn't care, or if that's actually part of the draw! I wonder the same things about the government, given they seem to have a mindset less suited for a government and more suited for the board of directors of a bank.

And I'm sure they could actually find a bit of a market for direct flights to major cities in the US year-round, when the vacation market's dried up and the only way for someone living in Bermuda to get someplace like New York is to pay way more than the asking price of a BermudAir ticket for long and inconvenient multi-stop flights. But that's so clearly not the point. A lot of those people also probably can't afford BermudAir, and the marketing clearly isn't targeting them.

Here are some posts from their Facebook. Some of the most recent, too. An "idyllic island paradise" where a smiling local Black man will serve you some delicious beverages! How tropical. He might even tell you some anecdotes about how wonderful it is to live in a sunny beach utopia where taxes don't exist. Just take a look at that palm tree! And something that frustrates me even more: just a picture of two Gombeys. The Gombey tradition of dance, costume, music, and performance is unique to Bermuda, and particularly its Black population, originating from the African slaves brought there by British colonists. I find it beyond tasteless to just post a picture of them without so much as a mention of what these costumes represent or who is wearing them, just a caption of boilerplate about your airline's upcoming launch. BermudAir's marketing places these people as literally just part of the scenery. I find this extraordinarily disrespectful.

There's nothing wrong with mentioning Gombey exists - in fact, there are events specifically for it! Gombey festivals! Boxing Day is the biggest day of the year for Gombey, don't you want to book a ticket for December? You could be in Boston eating swallowing mouthfuls of snow every time you try to breathe while a man with a Dunkin Donuts cup in his hand screams rude things at you from his car window, or you could be watching Gombey performances in Bermuda! You could even, for example, describe what these people do, or what troupe they're from, or even just mention them. Just mention them at all. I do find it pretty disrespectful when specific traditions are just waved off with a little vague non-description like 'two individuals on a beach in their traditional costume', but BermudAir didn't even do that little insufficient trifling amount.

It's the complete inverse of BWIA's steelpan logo. Steelpan is a major part of Trinidad and Tobago's history as the birthplace of dozens of musical traditions. Music is a huge part of the cultural history of the country, and part of that music was steelpan. The artisans who make steelpans and musicians who play them are something the people who created BWIA's logo thought was so fundamental to the very idea of their country that they put it on their government-owned national airline, making it the very first thing people who travelled to Trinidad and Tobago on a BWIA flight would see. I didn't end up mentioning it in the post (which is weird, because I have a false memory of including it - I think I may have in an earlier draft but then decided I couldn't fit it in even though in retrospect I obviously could and should have? Or maybe I mentioned it in reply to an ask I now can't find) but when I did my research I kept finding people talking about how much they adored BWIA and reminiscing about everything from watching their planes flying overhead to specific people they worked with, and it was really clear that this airline, beyond just nominally being owned by the government, was created by people who put real love for their country's heritage into their design.

BWIA certainly carried tourists and foreign businessmen but it wasn't made by them. That really, historically, hasn't been how things worked. You wouldn't make an airline in one country with a primary purpose of serving a market in another.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony following BermudAir's AOC being issued, featuring Adam Scott, the guy holding him, and tourism-and-aviation-related government personnel of Bermuda. One of them appears to be wearing a navy suit jacket, black-and-yellow tie, and pink shorts. image: Akil Simmons

Adam Scott describes Bermuda as his 'happy place', where he has 'developed links' for ten years.[14] Even when discussing BermudAir he doesn't describe himself as Bermudian, just 'linked' to it, a vacationer. There are spaces in BermudAir for Bermudians, though, he makes sure to clarify. They can provide "the flavours of Bermuda and the island’s renowned hospitality" to the actual clientele. Minister of Transport Wayne Furbert expresses his enthusiasm at the new jobs brought on by increased tourism[14], as if a year-round way for his actual constituents to get to and from Bermuda is simply...not something he's concerned about.

I think I need to cut myself off here, but the last thing I need to mention is this: a Bernews article was written on BermudAir, and their website allows comments. Here are some things people had to say.

Daniel G DeSilva: Although this is an “elite” air service, with BERMUDA emblazoned on the fuselage, it would be great if the tail design even remotely connected visually with Bermuda.

Paid off government: First of all this airline will be flying to other places. People forget that there are hundreds of Russia aircraft registered here that have never been in or out if Bermuda. This is not a Bermuda airline. Its just conveniently named after Bermuda and registered here. [...] And if you have to ask about the price then this airline is not for you!

(There was also some scattered speculation about it being some sort of front or scheme, which I definitely have no idea about, though I won't pretend it didn't occur to me while attempting to reconcile just how much this airline is definitely not going to make money. Having looked at their various publicly listed employees they all seem fairly credentialed, but...who even knows at this point. Maybe this was all an elaborate proof of concept for Odyssey all along. This is all so cynical it makes me want to scream.)

And that's just the thing, isn't it?

BWIA used beautiful colors vivid colors, never hiding the fact that Trinidad and Tobago are, indeed, very sunny islands with nice beaches, but that wasn't the point of it. It's so easy to make a plane that looks tropical, but BWIA didn't do that - they made a plane which represented Trinidad and Tobago.

And if I'm being fully honest, I like Topsey. I think she's adorable, and I think the design on her tail is pretty. But she wasn't designed by Bermudians and she doesn't represent Bermuda. BermudAir is an airline for the East Coast US, where people are taught in schools that the victims of an empire are colonists, taking a necessary stand against the iniquity of taxes, and the Wampanoag are no longer mentioned once the first Thanksgiving is over. The people who make up Bermuda are treated as structural parts of the tax haven England built, not citizens of a state or members of a culture. "Bermuda's first airline" ends up having very little to do with Bermuda, somehow. And I couldn't really bring myself to talk about Topsey without talking about Bermuda.

Will BermudAir fail? In my opinion, probably. But in the meantime, one of their airplanes is parked at Logan, and that's because this airline is for people from Boston, not people from Bermuda.

Sources:

[1] Government of Bermuda Cabinet Office, Department of Statistics. "Personal and Household Income: A 2010 Census Analytical Brief." www.gov.bm. Bermuda, December 2012. [2] Egan, Paul and Jeremy Deacon. "UBP about to Self-Destruct, Says Gordon." The Royal Gazette, August 8, 1995. [3] Sullivan, Aline. "Will Independence Spoil Bermuda?" nytimes.com. April 8, 1995. [4] Fowler, Naomi and Stubbs, Robert. "Bermuda: Inequality and Poverty in UK Overseas Territory." Tax Justice Network. Bristol, United Kingdom, June 21, 2018. [5] Bonfiglio, Briana. "BermudAir, the First Bermuda-Based Airline, Launches with All-Business Class Seats." Travel Market Report, August 24, 2023. [6] Schlappig, Ben. "Bermudair: New Bermuda-Based All-Business Class Airline Launches Flights." One Mile At A Time, August 24, 2023. [7] Rains, Taylor. "A New All-Business Class Airline Is Launching Flights between the US and Bermuda — See What It’ll Be like Aboard."Business Insider, August 24, 2023. [8] BermudAir Fleet Details and History [9] Bernews. "BermudAir Aircraft Arrives In Bermuda," August 20, 2023 [10] "Bermuda." United States Department of State Bureau of Public Affairs, 1985. [11] "2010 Census of Population & Housing Final Results." Hamilton, Bermuda: Bermuda Department of Statistics. [12] Bell, Jonathan, and Fiona McWhirter. "First Black Woman to Be Appointed Governor." The Royal Gazette, June 14, 2020. [13] Forbes, Keith Archibald. "Bermuda’s Resident Population of 63,779 and Local Expatriate Organizations: Origins of Citizens and Residents, 64% Black, 32% White, 4% Asian and Other." Bermuda Online, 2020. [14] Finighan, Gareth. "BermudAir Spreads Its Wings." The Royal Gazette, July 27, 2023. [15] Jeffries, Bayyinah S. 2022. "Race and Racism in Bermuda" Genealogy 6, no. 4: 89. [16] airlinehistory.co.uk [17] Forbes, Keith Archibald. "Bermuda Citizenship or Status: Deserving long-term foreign tax-paying residents including those with over 25 years residency are denied this." Bermuda Online, 2020. [18] “NATIVITY, MIGRATION AND BERMUDIAN STATUS.” Bermuda: Government of Bermuda, 2000.

#tarmac fashion week #grade: b-#region: north america #era: 2020s #bermudair #long haul #cabin fever #neelemanverse #region: bermuda #bwia

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