Silver Airways, the South Florida airline that offers flights to major cities in Florida and the Bahamas, faces having its lease terminated in Fort Lauderdale due to being behind on rent, county officials say.
“Business is business,” said County Mayor Lamar Fisher. “One needs to pay their bills or they need to move on.”
The County Commission’s vote on terminating the lease at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood international Airport is scheduled for next Tuesday. Silver Airways has operated from Gate C8 in Terminal 1 of Broward’s airport for years.
The company continues to negotiate with the county to resolve the issue, said Steve Rossum, the CEO for Silver Airways, on Tuesday afternoon. He said talks continued on Tuesday morning. “We’re really just bouncing back from COVID,” he said. Then, “the recovery was exacerbated” by the fuel spikes last year from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the national pilot shortage.
“It is our desire and expectation to reach a negotiated resolution expeditiously with the county that is fair to Silver and its employees, and fair to the taxpayers of Broward County,” Rossum said. The airline has more than 300 employees in Broward County and is planning to add more airplanes and destinations later this year, he said.
At the airport, Silver’s flight operations continued as usual on Tuesday.
As of December, the airline owed the aviation department almost $958,000 in fees and late charges — after the county took its $113,634 security deposit, according to a letter and email sent to the company’s CEO.
The county “elected to draw down the sum of $113,634.00, representing the entire security deposit to partly mitigate the damages resulting from Silver Airways’ defaults,” the letter reads.
In addition, the county wants Silver to pay more than $407,000 to replenish its security deposit, according to memos.
County Commissioner Steve Geller said that dollar amount due has continued to grow. He said he has tried to intervene to assist with negotiations because he liked the idea of an airline that served so many cities in Florida, but the two sides (the airport director and Silver) have “different definitions of ‘good-faith negotiations,'” he said.
“I always like to have more airlines as opposed to fewer,” he said, but “whatever gate Silver has will be quickly snapped up by another airline.”
While true, one Fort Lauderdale-based hotel and resort operator said late Tuesday he is unsettled by the possible negatives the situation might create for the local hospitality business as well as for his own resort in the Bahamas.
“You don’t want to see anybody in the tourism sector going out of business or kicked out,” said Andreas Iannou, CEO of Orchestra Hotels and Resorts.
His company owns the Fort Lauderdale Hilton Beach Resort in Fort Lauderdale, and the Pink Sands Resort Harbor Island in the Bahamas.
Iannou said that while he knows little about the dispute between the airline and the airport, Silver’s planes fly into North Eleuthera from Fort Lauderdale every day, and many of the passengers are Pink Sands Resort clients from Broward and Miami-Dade counties.
He said Silver was the first to resume flights into North Eleuthera after COVID restrictions were lifted in the Bahamas.
“Let’s sit down and discuss and show some flexibility,” Iannou said. “Hopefully it will be resolved. It would be good for tourism.”
The County Commission was provided documents showing demands for payment that started in January 2022, for past fees due for the airline’s use of the airport’s Terminal 1.
Seeing expansion
Silver serves 12 domestic destinations and 16 international airports in 10 countries. It’s based in Hollywood. Out of Fort Lauderdale, there are 14 destinations.
The airline is best known for flying to a half-dozen major cities in Florida, including Tallahassee and Orlando. Destinations also include Nassau and a number of islands in the Bahamas, as well as airports in New Orleans, Savannah, Ga., Huntsville, Al., and Charleston and Greenville-Spartanburg, SC.
In 2018, Silver acquired Seaborne Airlines, a Puerto Rico-based air carrier serving destinations throughout the commonwealth, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and other popular vacation spots in the Caribbean.
Last year, the airline raised $50 million in new funding as it expanded its fleet with newer versions of Franco-Italian made ATR turbo-prop planes.
The airline, which is owned by affiliated firms of the Philadelphia-based investment firm Versa Capital Management LLC, also reached a new labor contract last year with its unionized pilots who are members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Besides operating passenger service, Silver also provides cargo service with five ATR 72-500 aircraft that operate out of Fort Worth, Texas.
Lisa J. Huriash can be reached at lhuriash@sunsentinel.com. Follow on Twitter @LisaHuriash
