Airport has stepped down.

Accountant Mr. Charles Kempe was chairman of the Civil Aviation Air Advisory Committee, which among other things, recommended that an independent corporation should be set up to run the Airport.

In a hard-hitting report released earlier this year, the committee said: "The present management structure and organisation is inadequate and unable to carry out the functions for which it is responsible.

"A dramatic change is required if the standards of service, efficiency and cost-effectiveness are to be improved.'' The committee criticised Government control of redevelopment projects, which it said tended to get delayed or altered.

"This inevitably results in an obsolete, unsatisfactory, and incomplete facility for all concerned,'' it stated.

It also said the civil aviation department did not have the staff or equipment to adequately carry out management of the Airport.

And the committee slammed Government for ignoring past recommendations.

It noted that in the late 1970s a committee headed by then Minister of Marine & Air Services Sir John Plowman also recommended that such an Authority be created.

"If the long-term plan for the Airport had proceeded as proposed in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a commercially suitable first-class terminal would have been completed in a shorter time and at considerably less cost than is at present being achieved,'' the committee wrote.

"This has been demonstrated by the delays and over-runs involved in the construction of the new departure hall and the near absence of revenue-producing commercial activities in it.

"Such shortcomings are largely due to the constraints imposed on the organisation by Government bureaucracy and the inability to deal with such a large and complex enterprise on a commercial and businesslike basis.

"This is not peculiar to Bermuda and is the main reason why an operation such as the management of airports has been placed under a separate independent organisation in many other jurisdictions.'' Mr. Kempe could not be reached for comment.

And his secretary, Mrs. Wendy Outerbridge, would only say: "The Authority progressed to a point where Mr. Kempe was no longer involved''.

She referred all inquiries to the Transport Ministry.

When contacted, Transport Minister the Hon. Maxwell Burgess said: "I thank Mr. Kempe for the many hours that he put into getting the implementation of the Airport Authority to the level that it is at.

"Indeed, the Government and the people of Bermuda owe him deep gratitude.'' Mr. Burgess said he will spend the next two to three weeks considering a replacement for Mr. Kempe.

However, he added, plans for an Authority are "moving along quite well''.

He said he was hoping to have legislation on the issue presented in the next session of the House of Assembly.