St. Lucia Prepared for Air Jamaica Flight Suspension
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Contact: Ryan O'Brian
Friday, February 15, 2008 – Air Jamaica has announced it will be suspending its current thrice- weekly service to Saint Lucia effective April 1 2008.
Minister responsible for Tourism and Civil Aviation, Senator, the Honourable Allen Chastanet told the Government Information Service the airline had been going through some difficult times for several years, losing in excess of one million US dollars annually.
He said the Jamaican Government is currently trying to find a buyer for the carrier.
“My understanding is that they are in discussions with four different groups at that possibility. In the meantime when the financial results came out this year the airline has decided to try a different strategy and as a consequence the Saint Lucia route, which really is a leisure rout through Montego Bay and New York, have decided to suspend those services as of April 1st,” said Chastanet.
He, however, said the present Saint Lucia government knew it could not depend on Air Jamaica by itself, knowing the financial problems the airline was going through and aggressively pursued other options. “Air Jamaica represented about nine percent of our seat capacity from North America. We've now been able to get American Airlines in, which is ten percent, so one has substituted the other at this particular instance. I’ve just come back from meeting with American Airlines with the idea of talking about where we go, now that Air Jamaica is coming out of the market,” he added.
The Tourism and Civil Aviation Minister, who is a former Air Jamaica executive, said he knew what Air Jamaica was going through and hoped it would recover sufficiently in order to continue making their contribution to regional aviation. |
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