Jamaica Securing Air Connectivity

Jamaica is engaging with major airline partners to strengthen airlift arrangements and secure air connectivity to the island.

The objective is to safeguard the tourism sector, amid the recent cessation of operations of low-cost carrier Spirit Airlines, geopolitical tensions, volatile oil prices, and high airfares.

Tourism Minister, Hon. Edmund Bartlett, in a recent Ministerial Update with Jamaica Information Service (JIS) Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Giovanni Dennis, said he has had discussion with the Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB) board chairman to provide strategic direction for immediate talks to be held with the airlines.

He noted that carriers have been indicating “big pressures on their yields, big pressure on the price of fuel and what that is going to do to their route distribution system, what that’s going to do to their decisions to have more flights going to different places”.

“So, we’re going to have to move swiftly and well to secure our airlift arrangements in Jamaica,” he pointed out.

Minister Bartlett said that the country was still in a very strong position in relation to the rest of the region, noting that the demand for Jamaica “is very strong right now”.

“I came in [recently] on a [flight] that had no space for anything and that’s the feature of the situation here,” he said.

He said that the Government remains resolute in bringing new carriers to the island, highlighting the country’s expanding airlift connections and strategic push into Latin American markets.

“We have Copa with about 15 flights a week coming into Jamaica, which covers almost all of South America. We have Latam coming to Jamaica out of Lima, Peru, as their gateway, but they are back-channeling into all the other countries in South America.

“We have Wingo, which is a low-cost carrier of Copa coming out of Medellin and Bogota – six flights a week, three from each area. Then we have Avianca, which we are working on now… and Aeroméxico is expected to start flying out of Mexico [in] December or the first quarter of 2027,” he told JIS News.

Minister Bartlett said that the country will continue building its capacity to absorb the demand of tourism.

“The policy that we’re driving of Local First has, at its very core, building capacity among our local service providers so that we can compete with the markets elsewhere. It’s not just to be able to provide the goods here; it’s to provide the goods at a high level of quality and a quantity and a reliability and a price,” he stated.