Air Jamaica needs to explain Miami route cut

We have to believe that the decision by Air Jamaica, the national airline, to drop its Miami route, among others, was based on very strong financial reasons.

We also have to believe that the cost-benefit analysis has made it abundantly clear that no other factor can outweigh the financial, and that the traffic from the Miami route can move, stress free, to the Fort Lauderdale flight.
Otherwise, Air Jamaica might just have sounded its death knell.

For Miami was not a route like any other. Over time, Miami became the heart and soul of Air Jamaica. For convenience, it is hard to beat. Jamaicans needing to do business and shopping in Miami, a little over an hour away, and return home the same day, depended on those flights.

As our lead story in yesterday's edition pointed out, Miami has become for Jamaicans, "Kingston 21", a virtual extension of Kingston and St Andrew, because of the many nationals living in Florida and the heavy traffic between the two gateways.

The importance of Miami was established from as far back as the 1970s when the late former Prime Minister Michael Manley, perhaps in overexhuberance, offered to those who opposed his visit to Communist Cuba "five flights a day" then operated by Air Jamaica. The statement came back to haunt Mr Manley, but it demonstrated how deeply embedded the "Love Bird" was in the psyche of the Jamaican people.

Then in the eighties and early nineties, the airline became the favourite choice of the Informal Commercial Importers (ICIs), that hardy bunch of Jamaicans who traded goods for United States dollars used to purchase US goods for sale here. Their social and commercial impact has been documented and the Pearnel Charles and Constant Spring Arcades remain a testimony to that era.

We do not, of course, wish to see Air Jamaica go under. And we fervently hope that the current divestment effort will succeed, as a precursor to the complete turnaround of the airline.

It is just possible that the national airline can soar again. We believe that, having seen the possibilities when our own chairman, Mr Gordon "Butch' Stewart ran Air Jamaica from 1994 to 2004. Memories are still fresh in our minds about the "on-time no-line airline; "champagne flights"; "the flying chef"; the "Air Jamaica Jazz and Blues Festival" and a whole slew of other marketing efforts that spoilt us for other airlines. No other airline would accept the huge boxes that Jamaicans coming home like to take with them on "the little piece of Jamaica that flies".

It would sit much better with Jamaicans if the officials at Air Jamaica would take the time to explain why it is necessary to dispense with the Miami route and how they will compensate for that.

Moreover, the country needs to be told if there is a plan to sell off the route - similar to what we did in the case of the London Heathrow slots - or whether they will be retained for the new owners to have the possibility of reopening the Miami route.

One relatively obscure news release will not cut it.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/editorial/html/20090129T000000-0500_145426_OBS_AIR_JAMAICA_NEEDS_TO_EXPLAIN_MIAMI_ROUTE_CUT.asp