Commonwealth Development Authority executive director Manuel Sablan assured last week that they are \u201cvery well protected\u201d when it comes to their loan to Freedom Air.<\/p>\n
The outstanding debt plus interest Freedom Air owes sits at some $1.3 million right now, according to CDA.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are very well protected,\u201d Sablan said. \u201cThe only reason why we allowed this thing to go through is because the company continues to maintain a validity of the certificate, the FAA certificate to fly, and that\u2019s a very valuable thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted basically to explore any possibility that the company can continue to fly, because that would be an economic benefit to the CNMI. And that\u2019s really the reason why we provided the loan, to further encourage them to continue servicing. But if they fall a part, then there it is. We lost a company that has been providing services for the last 37 years,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
Sablan\u2019s comments come amid a Federal Aviation Administration plan to revoke Freedom Air\u2019s air carrier certificate. This is an amended proposal to one last year in May. The FAA indicated over the weekend, though, that the airline would appeal the revocation.<\/p>\n
CDA has been communicating with owner Joaquin Flores on a regular basis, said Sablan, adding that it would be a \u201csad situation\u201d if the airline collapses.<\/p>\n
In this case, though, he assured CDA was protected. \u201cWe have the security, we\u2019ll go after the assets\u2014both assets in the Guam Airport Authority premises and also on our site, [as well as] properties that the owner has on Guam and also here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese people have been operating the last 37 years, and they\u2019ve never come to CDA for a loan until they got into this bind,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019ve been providing services to Rota and Tinian, particularly medical referrals. Our main objective here is if it can be resuscitated and brought back for operations, it would work for the benefit of everybody, particularly in our quest for more tourism development. But that\u2019s the scenario,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Commonwealth Development Authority executive director Manuel Sablan assured last week that they are \u201cvery well…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[366,1456,4159,4160],"class_list":["post-200249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-cda","tag-freedom-air","tag-guam-airport-authority","tag-joaquin-flores"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200249\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}