Region needs to talk, says ex-boss of Air Jamaica

Former President and CEO of Air Jamaica Limited, Bruce Nobles, says that although the region is a significant market, not just for Caribbean carriers but also international, our downfall continues to be a lack of productive talking among the countries.

In a recent interview, the man who would have been at the forefront in assisting the Jamaica government in the divestment of Air Jamaica, said that even within CARICOM there was not sufficient talking, far less when one considered the fact that the Caribbean was also made up of the Dutch, Spanish, and French Caribbean.

Speaking specifically to why the merger between Air Jamaica and Caribbean Airlines did not create the fireworks it was purported to achieve, Nobles said he was not clear as to why that would have been the case.

 “The original vision for combining [the two airlines] was that we would combine into this large entity that could serve the entire Caribbean.

“Obviously, synergies with LIAT would have been the next step. It’s not clear to me why that merger has not worked as well as we thought it was going to when we did it. I’ve been away from it for a while. It is clear to me that is should have been... there is an opportunity in the Caribbean to create at least one airline that would serve within the Caribbean... But there are a bunch of different reasons and some of it is that the governments don’t talk to each other, or are not willing to cooperate.”

He believed that this bureaucracy and governments’ refusal the work together for the common good of the region was what also led to the downfall of RedJet, the most recent air-carrier causality in the region’s aviation industry.

Nobles, who is now the President and Founder of The Renwick Company, says he would like
to see the region be able to hold its own in the aviation industry. He believes we have a lot to offer and that the demand for our services is there, not only from those living the region, but from an even bigger Diaspora. Cooperation he says, it what will help make it happen. (RA)