A Bermuda charter flight to next year’s Carifta Games in Bahamas is almost fully booked.Bermuda National Athletics Association (formerly BTFA) President Donna Watson threw out the charter idea right after this year’s Carifta Games in Bermuda and for the last few months the association have been promoting the flight.Yesterday, in response to a newspaper ad which appeared on Wednesday, Watson confirmed that the 150-seat charter was nearly full, such has been the response, even in tough economic times.“We decided right after Carifta that we were going to go ahead with the charter because we had so many people who showed interest,” said the President.“We have a person, Mia Black, who has been assigned to be in charge of the charter. She was involved with Carifta as one of the officials. I tasked her with getting information about a charter and she did all of the background work and we have partnered with Miami Air who have offered us a 150-seat charter.”The plane will leave Bermuda on Thursday, March 28 and return on Tuesday, April 2. The ticket price of $950 includes transportation to and from the airport and tickets to all three days of competition.Watson said the association opted for a smaller plane in this first-time venture so as guage response and not suffer a loss. One hundred of the seats have been made available to the general public while the others will be reserved for the athletes, coaches and BNAA officials who observed the atmosphere created by many visiting spectators from the Caribbean for this year’s Games, including a Bahamas contingent who flew in on a charter.“We’ve offered 100 seats and I’m pleased to say it is close to being sold out,” said Watson. “The 50 we have left is for the athletes, officials, board of directors and a couple of other people to be included in that.”“We have people paying a deposit ($150) to secure their spot and have given them until the end of December to have it paid and people have been making weekly or monthly payments. Some have paid it in full already.”Watson stressed that the association had no plans to put on an additional — or larger plane — once the plane is full.“Because this is the first time we are doing it, we don’t want to get stuck with a bill because people either couldn’t pay or dropped out at the last minute, especially in this economy,” she stated.“What we are saying if anybody else wants to go then you will have to make your own arrangements. We are going to go with just the one (plane) and see how it works out. We have already given an initial deposit to Miami Air. We had a meeting with everybody who’s travelling a couple of weeks ago and everybody is enthused“I think the excitement was from Carifta. I made the announcement at Carifta that we were going to have a charter, so I’ve had people come up to me since Carifta and the interesting thing is these are not just parents of the athletes but people who just like track and field. They enjoyed Carifta, liked the environment and just want to go to Bahamas.“They were all at Carifta and got the Carifta bug and within a matter of weeks of putting it out there we were pretty much sold out. The reason we put the ad in the paper again is we wanted to make sure that if people drop out that we have other people there.”Added Watson: “If this is successful we can look at doing something like this again, especially since we have already developed the relationship with Miami Air. This (charter) is also good for us because we can change names because now if an athlete gets injured and we have to replace them then we have to pay $150 to change a name on a reservation. This gives us more flexibility.”Bermuda sent 38 athletes to the Carifta Games in Jamaica in 2011 while 55 represented the Island on home soil this year which saw Justin Donawa win the Island’s only gold in the triple jump.