Richard Lord

The T&T gov­ern­ment has been giv­en a one-month ul­ti­ma­tum by Ja­maica to give a clear out­line on the way for­ward for the Air Ja­maica brand.This is ac­cord­ing to Ja­maica's Min­is­ter of Trans­port, Works and Hous­ing, Omar Davies, who met with T&T's Min­is­ter of Trade, In­dus­try and In­vest­ments Vas­ant Bharath and of­fi­cials of CAL in Kingston on Tues­day.The Air Ja­maica brand is now un­der the con­trol of T&T-owned Caribbean Air­lines (CAL).A re­port on RJR News yes­ter­day said Ja­maicans had ex­pressed con­cern about how their air­line was be­ing man­aged fol­low­ing a de­ci­sion by CAL in April to re­duce dai­ly flights to Ja­maica.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, the dis­cus­sions cen­tred on CAL's Ja­maican op­er­a­tions, the air­line's ar­rears to lo­cal en­ti­ties, in­clud­ing the Cus­toms De­part­ment and the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of Ja­maica, and oth­er mat­ters."We dis­cussed the re­duc­tion in the num­ber of flights be­tween North Amer­i­ca and Ja­maica and the way for­ward," Davies said.Davies said the dis­cus­sions re­lat­ed to the con­tin­u­ing use of the Air Ja­maica brand name."We agreed for the new (CAL) board to be giv­en a month to come back to us with a spe­cif­ic de­vel­op­ment in terms of the way for­ward," Davies said.

With re­spect to CAL's debt to Ja­maican en­ti­ties, it was agreed that the air­line would in the fu­ture re­main with­in agreed cred­it lim­its.Davies said the Ja­maicans com­plained to the T&T del­e­ga­tion about the hir­ing of Ja­maican em­ploy­ees by Caribbean Air­lines."We dis­cussed the is­sue of the hir­ing of Ja­maican pi­lots and Ja­maica by CAL and the con­di­tions sur­round­ing those hir­ing. We have agreed work plans on the way for­ward," Davies said.Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, Bharath said gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to meet­ing the one-month ul­ti­ma­tum.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day af­ter re­turn­ing home from the meet­ing with Davies on Tues­day. Chair­man of CAL Phillip Mar­shall at­tend­ed the meet­ing.Bharath said there was gen­er­al con­sen­sus from Ja­maica on how the air­line would be able to re­cov­er lost routes. CAL dis­con­tin­ued ser­vices on cer­tain routes re­cent­ly for eco­nom­ic rea­sons. This has up­set Ja­maica. Bharath said those routes have been "tak­en over by Jet Blue and West Jet."They want­ed to have a plan of ac­tion from Caribbean Air­lines to re­sus­ci­tate the routes, to get back cus­tomers, to re-en­gage the Ja­maican di­as­po­ra and to make the air­line prof­itable."He said Ja­maica had a 16 per cent share­hold­ing in CAL in ex­change for the Ja­maican routes lost when the agree­ment was es­tab­lished a few years ago.

Bharath said the is­sue of out­stand­ing pay­ments to the Ja­maican Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty, the Cus­toms and Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ties "was al­so ad­dressed. "We have com­mit­ted to make those pay­ments by the end of June," he said, adding that the cash flow prob­lem af­fect­ing Air Ja­maica will be re­solved."Gov­ern­ment has now put those funds back in Caribbean Air­lines and so they will be able to pay their bills."Bharath said on the is­sue of hir­ing prac­tices by CAL "we have been able to ad­dress those is­sues"."I have com­mit­ted to speak with Min­is­ter George (Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty) re­gard­ing the quick grant­i­ng of work per­mits for Ja­maican pi­lots."Bharath said CAL will en­sure "wher­ev­er the ex­per­tise lays–whether Ja­maica or T&T–we will seek to uti­lize the best pos­si­ble staff and not just staff from T&T."He said the meet­ing was very suc­cess­ful "and both par­ties walked away with a com­mit­ment to en­sure the air­line works."The Trade Min­is­ter said the meet­ing agreed to al­low the CAL Board to es­tab­lish two work­ing teams–one in Ja­maica and the oth­er in T&T–to chart the way for­ward for the air­line. He said the first meet­ing of the teams will take place in two weeks.