EDITORIAL - The potential and lessons of the REDjet saga

We are happy that after much dithering and circuitous manoeuvres, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago will now comply with their obligations under the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas by allowing the Barbados-based budget carrier, REDjet, to fly to their territories.

In the case of Jamaica, our minister of transport, Mr Mike Henry, declared with a straight face, and a seeming absence of irony, that his Government had welcomed REDjet's application "as an opportunity for expanding air services for the benefit of the travelling public".

"As we move forward with efforts to further develop and expand our air-service operations and services ... we do so with commitment to quality, equity and openness," Mr Henry told Parliament.

Of course, it is not always easy to decipher Mr Henry's unscripted public comments, which tend to be meandering.

But Mr Henry's prior, and subsequent, remarks about "contracting routes", and his hints of an expected negative response by the Eastern Caribbean airline, LIAT, to the wish of other carriers to compete on its routes, are counter-intuitive to his suggestion that Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago were never hostile to REDjet's entry to the market.

Protecting caribbean airlines

Their claims of safety concerns notwithstanding, the delay in granting REDjet a licence to fly was, we believe, to protect Caribbean Airlines Limited (CAL), the carrier company owned by their two governments. Jamaica became a 16 per cent stakeholder in CAL after that company's official acquisition of Air Jamaica earlier this year.

Such commercial machinations were in breach of Article 135(1)(f) of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas under which Caribbean Community (CARICOM) governments pledged "the removal of obstacles to the provision of transport services by nationals of the member states". These nationals would include REDjet, whose principals may be Irish, but is registered and domiciled in Barbados.

Moreover, this fallback by Kingston and Port-of-Spain to protectionism flew in the face of Article 134 of the treaty, where CARICOM declared its appreciation that "efficient, reliable (and) affordable transport services" would be important to building and consolidating the Community into a genuine single market and economy, for which the revised treaty provides the basis.

Renew discussions

The REDjet saga highlights the need, we feel, for a renewed and frank conversation in CARICOM about air transport services, without this a priori conclusion that state-owned airlines are essential. Jamaica, after all, has the bank-breaking experience of Air Jamaica.

The conversation should also include the greater collaboration between regional aviation regulatory agencies - if not the creation of a single one - to help deal with issues of the kind that now challenged Barbados and provided the chimera employed by Kingston and Port-of-Spain to stall REDjet.

Additionally, as is anticipated by the revised treaty, CARICOM must move with greater urgency in upgrading and harmonising their competition laws and the operation of the fair-trade watchdogs of member states. Such mechanism can help hold to account companies like REDjet if their aim, as Jamaica seemed to fear, is to "bait and switch".

In the event, we welcome REDjet, for, as Minister Henry conceded, "the travelling public ... has been clamouring for the added air-service options within the region".

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