Bahamas air to Nassau

[TwoBitTxn]

Its kinda of a long story but I think its worth it.
Two years ago my then pregnant wife and I took a trip to Nassau. I hate turbo props so I opted to fly Bahamas air from Ft Lauderdale to Nassau. They were flying regional jets. Going there the baggage compartment filled most of the way up from the previous flights bags so there wasn't much room for our stuff. I was the only one with scuba gear. So my gear took the next flight. Our flight was an hour late leaving. I discovered later this is normal. They were nice and delivered all of my gear to our resort early the next morning. I had it in time to go dive with Stuart Coves. (great trip)The trip back was much worse. We got to the airport and discovered the privious flight was badly over booked. So they had to scatter those passengers onto other planes. Our plane didn't exist. They just flat didn't have a plane for us. We did finally make it to Ft. Lauderdale several hours late. I had a bad feeling and checked on my scuba gear to discover it was terminated in Ft. Lauderdale by Bahamas air. We were going to to Dallas. So I got that fixed. When they changed our tickets they took our original tickets from us and gave us a FIM (flight interruption manifest) American air had no idea what that was until we found someone who had been in the business for at least 20 years. We found that out when we handed what was something like a boarding pass to the lady at the gate and she states " I haven't seen one of these in 20 years!!"

Advice.... Its about $20-30 more.... take the turbo prop.

Tom

 

[Natasha]

Interesting story. Thanks for sharing. I would like to hear more about your diving with Stuarts Cove, if you feel like typing again.
:sunny:

 

[TwoBitTxn]

We stayed on site there at Stuart Coves. When we got there we were both hungry. (rememer the wife was preggers) So we were introduced to the $10 cheese burger on the resort. We only made that mistake once. We also learned the pace of service is a little slower over there.

The dive operation is great. I could store my gear there. It was locked up at night. The rinse facilities were more than adequate. We made our bookings I got to dive. It was pretty laid back and we had quite a bit of leeway. They told us about the dive in the pre dive breifing and then we went down. We could pretty much do what we wanted to as long as we were back with 500 lbs. I made a night dive with them too and that was fun. It rained some, but not enough to mess anything up for us. Michelle (wife) and I snorkeled off the beach and saw some neat marine life. The neatest was a little fish that digs a hole with its mouth then backs up into it. It stands on its tail in the hole. Before I had only seen them in the big public aquariums. Can't recall a name. They have a couple of reasonable friendly parrots. They both have signs warning "I bite". I didn't do the shark dive but I did see some sharks and got a cool pic of a barracuda. Sorry no scanner.

I would definitely go back. It was just a weekend trip. So it went by quickly. The straw market was neat for awhile. I got tired of "hey mon wanna buy some weed?"

 

[Stubbi]

Interesting story, since we got delayed two years ago for 5 hours from san salvador-bahamas and missed our connecting flight to London. Most people told us that this was the reason it was called BANANAS AIR. Very incompetent, if you can avoid them - please do.

 

[joewr]

Tom,

And now you know why we fly American Airlines directly to Nassau. We also used to land on Paradise Island (the small airport there was recently demolished) to avoid lost baggage in Nassau, but discovered that PI could have the same problems.

We have dived with Stuart Cove and found them to be very astute a finding ways to increase the cash flow! But we loved the Shark Adventure and Wall Flying! We also liked being on our own at dive sites we knew. If you are a novice diver, though, their "The reef is down there, it goes that way, be back in 40 minutes or with 500 lbs," could be a little intimidating. Also, if you by accident get caught in a current and do not surface near the boat, they will, in general, not come to pick you up--swimming is the order of the day!

Finally, do your homework before you dive because they really will let the divers choose the site! You just have to speak up. That is nice when some of the folks have been there enough to know the better sites!

Additionally, we did some diving with Bahama Divers. They are on the opposite side of New Providence and dive different sites than Stuart Cove. Consider going with them to add some variety.

Finally, for that post-dive treat, try the ice cream shop(Jimmy's?) on the lowest floor of the Atlantis Hotel--best ice cream on New Providence/Paradise Island!

Joewr