How a youngster from Bottle Creek founded the region’s largest privately-owned airline network
Lyndon Gardiner’s was conceptualised 40 years ago amid the sun-speckled streets of sleepy Grand Turk as the Cold War began to thaw and the world, at least here, felt like a village.
The 1980s may have been the decade of decadence but it wasn’t fortune Lyndon sought, but freedom.
Getting a pilot’s licence was a lofty aspiration for a boy who grew up, by his own admission, in poverty in a single-parent household, on a tiny island to boot.
That’s the thing about dreams. And those who dare to have them.
The goal back then was a fairly straightforward one; to visit neighbouring Dominican Republic, just 150 miles away, at a time and day of the week that was convenient.
Sometimes, Lyndon confesses, he still has to pinch himself when he considers how that teenage ambition would ultimately give rise to what is today the Caribbean’s largest privately-owned airline network.
