Editorial | Deeper than commuter airline

Daryl Vaz’s longing for the revival of scheduled domestic air services in Jamaica is understandable. That way, commuters can travel relatively long distances quickly.

But there are two factors with which the transport minister must contend as he pushes for the return of scheduled, short-haul domestic airlines. First, it can’t be without a reason that several have launched, and quickly spluttered, since the collapse of the state-supported Air Jamaica Express in the first half of the 2000s. On the face of it, it suggests something about the economics of the commuter airline business in the Jamaican environment.

More critically, even as Mr Vaz looks to revive domestic air travel, it shouldn’t be outside the context of a broader transportation policy, whose priority must be the movement of commuters more efficiently and comfortably by road, via public transportation. Which is how the overwhelming majority of Jamaicans travel. And their ability to do so is important to the national economy.

As this newspaper reported this week, Mr Vaz recently charged the Airports Authority of Jamaica (AAJ) – the regulator as well as lessor and operator of Jamaica’s airports and aerodromes – to look at ways to resuscitate intra-Jamaica air travel.

“It is very difficult for me to know that there is no intra-island, domestic airline service,” he said. “I would love for the day where we would have that service as an option, rather than having to depend solely on ground transportation between parishes …”

Part of the minister’s concern is congestion and bottlenecks on segments of key highways, which extend travel times between important destinations, such as tourism centres along the island’s north coast and the capital in the south.

While there are a number of ongoing projects to expand existing highways and to build new ones to ease this logjam, Mr Vaz, apparently, does not think that will be sufficient.

UNSUSTAINABLE NUMBERS

What isn’t clear, though, are the kinds of interventions he expects from the AAJ, and by extension the Jamaican Government, which has largely extricated itself from the operational side of the aviation business. It leased the island’s two international airports, Sangster in Montego and Norman Manley in Kingston, to foreign operators, and in the middle of the 2000s handed the iconic state-owned airline, Air Jamaica, an international carrier, to Trinidad and Tobago’s Caribbean Airlines for a minority stake in that company. The subsidiary, Air Jamaica Express, was closed earlier.

The Government, with pressure from the International Monetary Fund in the face of the island’s fiscal crisis, had good economic reasons to get out of the airline business.

By the time Air Jamaica was renationalised towards the end of 2004, after a decade in private hands, the company had an accumulated deficit of over US$800 million. In the final three years before the deal with Caribbean Airlines, Air Jamaica lost more than US$340 million. Unfortunately, there has been no public disaggregation of Air Jamaica Express’ contribution, during its years of operation, to the company’s overall loss.

Those are unsustainable numbers, which the Government would obviously have no intention of revisiting – either in whole or part. And neither have the intra-island carriers that attempted to have a go in the market seemed able to make a success of it. In that sense, they appear to echo commuter airlines across the Caribbean, where small, relatively poor markets with too few air travellers tend to undermine profitability. The airline poster child for this scenario is LIAT, the Antigua-based carrier that, since the 1970s, has undergone myriad restructurings and bankruptcies and is still attempting to find its way.

LONG-TERM TRANSPORT POLICY

Even in the United States, the federal government, under its essential air services programme has, for decades, found it necessary to provide fare subsidies to airlines operating in small communities where air services are deemed necessary but it may be otherwise unprofitable to do so. That situation could hardly apply in Jamaica. Commuters would no doubt be expected to pay the economic cost of their flights. In the event, only a small, richer portion of the domestic population would likely travel by commuter airline.

This brings us back to the necessary emphasis on long-term transport policy that would take into account issues such as the regulation of public and private vehicles, including, possibly, disincentivising the latter; how and where roads are built; what new types of transportation systems may be introduced; and how the various modes of transportation are integrated; and the relationship between an efficient transportation system and economic growth and development.

There are good reasons to consider public transportation through these larger prisms. For instance, each year Jamaica loses hundreds of millions of productive man hours because of an inefficient public transport system, and by having commuters stuck in gridlock on congested roads.

People attempt to find private solutions to the public transportation and security problems in vehicle ownership. So Jamaica spends over US$300 million a year importing vehicles, not including spare parts and other materials to keep them going. Additionally, of over 22 million barrels of oil imported annually, costing more than US$2 billion in 2022, a third is fuel for ground transportation.

The bottom line: there is economic logic to thinking deeply, broadly and creatively about public transportation.