Business View Caribbean - Apriol 2015 7
Editor’s
Note
Welcome to the March issue of Business View Maga-
zine, a global leader in business-to-business profiles,
news and opinion – whose mission is to detail the
inner workings of today’s most influential companies
through direct one-on-one contact with their key de-
cision-makers.
As always, our coverage touches a broad range of in-
dustries.
Informative features in this month’s Caribbean edi-
tion include a piece on the Owen Roberts Interna-
tional Airport, whose burgeoning passenger count in
the Cayman Islands provides a unique challenge to
Albert Anderson, chief executive officer of the Cay-
man Islands Airport Authority.
The airport itself was named for the man – Owen
Roberts – who piloted the first commercial aircraft to
land at the airstrip that preceded the existing facili-
ties in 1952. Located in George Town, it now serves
as the major gateway linking the Cayman Islands to
worldwide destinations, and provides the main point
of entry and exit to Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac and
Little Cayman.
“It grew from there and it was kind of the gateway to
open up our tourism industry,” Anderson said. “Tour-
ism has grown exponentially from there to where we
are. Today we have an airport that handles a million
passengers a year. We handle 25,000 aircraft move-
ments per year.”
A workforce of 174 employees is spread across the
airport in George Town and a smaller operation –
Charles Kirkconnell International Airport – in Cay-
man Brac. The facilities not only deal with the tour-
ism traffic, but also process nearly 3.9 million pounds
of cargo annually and almost a quarter-million more
pounds of mail while helping to sustain a community
that is heavily dependent on imported goods.
The authority was established in 2004 with a man-
date to manage all services and facilities at the two
airports with a vision to “bring excellence to all levels
of your airport experience,” Anderson said.
That’s challenging, he said, given that the main air-
port was constructed to handle far less traffic, a real-
ity that’s prompted a significant amount of renova-
tion/expansion work over a three-year period.
“The airport was designed for 500,000 (passen-
gers), so we have a fairly significant congestion is-
sue,” Anderson said. “That is the sort of main thing
that keeps us up at night, but we do have a plan to
address that, which has kicked off. That should dou-
ble the capacity of the existing airport.”
Check out the full-length airport piece as well as
other feature stories in this month’s issue, alongside
supplemental content in the form of Top 10 lists, the
Opening Lines section and the latest installment of
our periodic end-of-magazine feature – “Exit Inter-
view” – which will include contributions from key
voices in industry sectors covered by the publication.
Please feel free to contact me with any comments
or critiques, as well as suggestions for ways we can
continue to provide a publication that’s pertinent,
educational and entertaining.
Until April … I wish you good health and good busi-
ness.
Regards,
Lyle Fitzsimmons
Vice President, Editorial
Business View Magazine
