JAMAICA | Why is Caribbean Airlines not flying Tourists to Jamaica asks Purkiss

Purkiss questions Bartlett's failure to engage Caribbean Airlines — a carrier Jamaica part-owns — while three American airlines set the price of coming home

KINGSTON, Jamaica — Opposition Spokesperson on Tourism and Linkages and Member of Parliament for East Hanover, Ms Andrea Purkiss, has demanded that the Minister of Tourism, the Hon. Edmund Bartlett, disclose whether he has held any discussions with Caribbean Airlines about restoring service between Florida and Jamaica — an airline in which the Government of Jamaica holds close to twelve per cent of the shares.

“We are not a customer of Caribbean Airlines standing at the counter asking a favour. We are an owner,” Ms Purkiss said. “Somebody in this administration needs to explain to the Jamaican people what our shareholding is actually for.”

With Spirit Airlines gone since May, the Florida corridor has been carved up among three United States carriers — American into Miami, JetBlue into Fort Lauderdale, Southwest into Orlando — one airline to a gateway, with little overlap to restrain pricing. Return fares between Montego Bay and Miami were quoted above US$3,700 in the third week of August.

The Breadbasket and the Lifeline

Ms Purkiss said tourism remains Jamaica's breadbasket industry, but it is now rivalled — and in the present year almost certainly surpassed — by remittances from the diaspora. Bank of Jamaica figures record inflows of US$3.49 billion in 2025, a record, equivalent to roughly fifteen per cent of gross domestic product and exceeding earnings from tourism.

“The same Jamaicans whose money holds this economy upright are the ones being charged three thousand seven hundred United States dollars to come and see their mothers,” she said. “We take their remittances with one hand and price them out of their own country with the other. There is no polite way to describe that.”

A Route Abandoned Before the Market Changed

Caribbean Airlines withdrew from both its Montego Bay and Kingston services to Fort Lauderdale in November 2025 — six months before Spirit Airlines ceased operations. It exited a market that still contained an ultra-low-cost competitor flying at eighty per cent capacity. That competitor no longer exists.

“Every commercial assumption behind that withdrawal collapsed along with Spirit,” Ms Purkiss said. “The cheap carrier that made the route unviable is gone. The fares have doubled. Has anybody in this Ministry lifted a telephone to say so? If Caribbean Airlines has examined the post-Spirit market and still says no, let them say so publicly — but the question must be asked first, and I see no evidence that it has been.”

She recalled that there was a time when Jamaica paid airlines to fly here, underwriting seats through Jamaica Vacations Limited to guarantee capacity out of the United States and Europe when the market alone would not provide it.

“We once paid strangers to bring us visitors,” she said. “Today we part-own an airline and cannot get it to fly the route. That is not thrift. That is neglect.”

A Trade That Is Due an Audit

Jamaica gave up its flag carrier in 2010 — as a condition of the International Monetary Fund's US$1.2 billion bailout, according to a former director of Trinidad and Tobago's Civil Aviation Authority. In its place the country took a sixteen per cent stake in Caribbean Airlines valued at US$28.5 million, since diluted to just under twelve per cent and moving towards the ten per cent threshold below which Jamaica forfeits its seat on the board.

“We closed an airline and accepted a share certificate instead of aircraft,” Ms Purkiss said. “Sixteen years on, that trade is due an audit. What has the equity delivered? Not a dividend. Not fare discipline. And since November, not one seat between Jamaica and South Florida. Meanwhile the Kingston–Fort Lauderdale route — the artery our diaspora uses to reach family in the east and south-east — has lost two carriers in ten months.”

What the Opposition Is Calling For

Ms Purkiss is calling on the Minister of Tourism to:

1.  Disclose whether any discussions have taken place with Caribbean Airlines since Spirit's collapse, and report the outcome to Parliament.

2.  Formally request that Caribbean Airlines revisit its November 2025 withdrawal in light of materially changed market conditions on the Florida corridor.

3.  State what the Government understands the sustainable airlift commitment given under the 2010 agreement to require, and whether it considers that commitment discharged.

4.  Say plainly whether Jamaica intends to defend its shareholding above the ten per cent board threshold, or allow it to lapse.

“Our people are not asking for charity. They are asking for a seat on an aeroplane at a price a working Jamaican can pay,” Ms Purkiss said. “We own part of a regional airline. We built this industry on airlift we once paid for ourselves. The Minister must stop telling us the market will sort itself out and start telling us what he has actually done.”

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