This week we wit­nessed two de­ci­sions that demon­strate the pos­si­bil­i­ties and the chal­lenges of unit­ing the Caribbean peo­ple.

The de­ci­sion by Caribbean Air­lines to re­sume flights out of Kingston to cities in the Unit­ed States and Cana­da, and be­tween Ja­maica and Bar­ba­dos is wel­comed news for an air­line that has been bleed­ing cash due to the cur­tail­ment of its op­er­a­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to a press re­lease from its CEO Garvin Med­era, start­ing next Mon­day Caribbean Air­lines will be re­sum­ing in­ter­na­tion­al and re­gion­al sched­uled flights, on a phased ba­sis, out of its Ja­maica hub.

It must be re­mem­bered that Caribbean Air­lines ac­quired Ja­maica’s for­mer na­tion­al air­line, Air Ja­maica and the Ja­maican gov­ern­ment is a mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­er in CAL. There­fore CAL is ef­fec­tive­ly Ja­maica’s na­tion­al car­ri­er.

The fact that the Ja­maican gov­ern­ment has moved to re-open its bor­ders as it tries to as­sist its ail­ing econ­o­my must mean that CAL has to en­sure it re­mains an im­por­tant car­ri­er in the mar­ket.

CAL is al­so con­stant­ly fight­ing for mar­ket share and has done well to main­tain a ma­jor pres­ence in the Ja­maican mar­ket and while ini­tial­ly, Air Ja­maica’s lega­cy op­er­a­tions were a drain on CAL that time has long past with the air­line cut­ting un­prof­itable routes out of Kingston and hav­ing a lean­er op­er­a­tion.

It is there­fore un­for­tu­nate that we have heard some un­in­formed com­ments that CAL is burn­ing mon­ey and be­ing sup­port­ed by the gov­ern­ment-backed US $63 mil­lion loan and there­fore should not re­open in Ja­maica first.

The de­ci­sion to re­turn to Kingston is pre­cise­ly to lim­it the burn rate of the air­line’s cash and to start to pre­pare it to re­turn to the skies as the re­gion’s top car­ri­er. If there is one thing that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic ought to have taught us is when it comes down to brass tax the re­gion is on its own and to­geth­er it is pos­si­ble to find so­lu­tions to the chal­lenges we face.

The oth­er de­ci­sion that oc­curred this week was an an­nounce­ment that re­gion­al air­line Li­at will have to be liq­ui­dat­ed and a new en­ti­ty formed.

Ac­cord­ing to An­tigua’s Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne COVID-19 in­creased the re­gion­al air­line’s loss­es ex­po­nen­tial­ly. “So where­as in all of 2019 Li­at made a loss of about EC$12 mil­lion, that was with­in the means of the share­hold­er gov­ern­ments to sub­sidise,” Browne told a ra­dio pro­gramme in An­tigua.

He added, “You would have found that since COVID, the planes have been ground­ed, they have to pay the lease pay­ments and they are not get­ting any rev­enue. A de­ci­sion will have to be made to col­lapse it and then maybe the coun­tries with­in the re­gion will have to come to­geth­er to form a new en­ti­ty.”

Brown was cor­rect in his state­ment that the re­gion can­not move for­ward with­out a form of con­nec­tiv­i­ty and “you can­not have an in­te­gra­tion move­ment if peo­ple can­not con­nect.”

“What I’m hop­ing that we do not have go­ing for­ward with the new en­ti­ty, is any squab­ble over the lo­ca­tion of the head­quar­ters, at the end of the day, the on­ly ser­vice that An­tigua and Bar­bu­da has en­joyed…with­in Cari­com (Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty) is Li­at and this has been the case for sev­er­al decades. So I just hope that we are not go­ing to have coun­tries with­in the re­gion op­por­tunis­ti­cal­ly fight­ing us to get the head­quar­ters in their coun­try to dis­place An­tigua and Bar­bu­da,”

There are a cou­ple of is­sues that arise from the seem­ing demise of Li­at. The first is the cost of in­tra-re­gion trav­el.

Why for a half hour flight to Bar­ba­dos or Grena­da cost some­where be­tween US$350 and US$500 re­turn? You com­pare that cost to a flight be­tween T&T and Mi­a­mi and you see how the math just does not work.

Part of the chal­lenge is that re­gion­al gov­ern­ments ap­ply hefty tax­es which make it dif­fi­cult for air­lines to re­duce the cost of flights and act as a dis­in­cen­tive to re­gion­al trav­el. The demise of the air­line al­so points to the failed poli­cies of re­gion­al gov­ern­ments hav­ing too much in­flu­ence on the op­er­a­tion of the air­line.

The prime min­is­ter’s first in­stinct is to pro­tect An­tigua as the base of the air­line. He does that on the no­tion that it is one of the few ben­e­fits that the peo­ple of the Caribbean coun­try re­ceive from their mem­ber­ship in Cari­com.

Sure­ly the prime min­is­ter ex­ag­ger­ates and ob­vi­ous­ly ig­nores the ben­e­fit of re­gion­al in­sti­tu­tions, in­clud­ing but not lim­it­ed to, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank.

But one can un­der­stand the is­sue of jobs and con­tri­bu­tion to the econ­o­my and while one can sym­pa­thise with PM Browne his re­marks show the kind of uni­lat­er­al stance that does not help the re­gion.

The ques­tion has to be asked, should re­gion­al gov­ern­ments con­tin­ue to op­er­ate the air­line, and can some­thing be put in place to en­sure that con­nec­tiv­i­ty con­tin­ues to the small­er ter­ri­to­ries like Do­mini­ca while em­ploy­ing pri­vate cap­i­tal?

Can re­gion­al gov­ern­ments see the big pic­ture that less tax rev­enue from air­lines may lead to more rev­enue from ho­tels and guest hous­es?

We have to as a re­gion get away from in­su­lar­i­ty and sup­port re­gion­al busi­ness­es, not by try­ing to own and op­er­ate them but pro­vid­ing the kind of reg­u­la­to­ry sup­port they need.

We re­cent­ly saw where re­gion­al ce­ment mak­er TCL had to fight tooth and nail to try and keep jobs in the re­gion and gen­er­ate for­eign ex­change while fight­ing off ce­ment im­port­ed from Turkey.

I am an ab­solute be­liev­er in free en­ter­prise and en­tre­pre­neur­ship but I al­so feel we need to pro­tect and help grow lo­cal and re­gion­al busi­ness­es and not just be im­porters of that we can pro­duce suc­cess­ful­ly here.

Per­haps the Li­at de­ba­cle will lead to the for­ma­tion of a sin­gle re­gion­al air­line but if it is to hap­pen CAL must en­sure that it does due dili­gence be­fore it even pon­ders any such deal.