The national carrier has always provided Jamaican people with a great sense of pride, pride not only because it was a successful airline winning numerous awards, or because its one of the safest airlines with no crashes in its history... no it gave Jamaicans a sense of pride because simply put it was a little piece of Jamaica. Once you stepped on an Air Jamaica plane you felt like you were own, due to the service on board and the friendly smiles you expect only from Jamaicans, and also due to the fact that nearly everybody on the plane was a Jamaican and you could tell because of the strong patois you heard, or the strong smell that wafts through the isles of people and their shet pan's filled with their lunch on board, it was truly a Jamaican experience. However this sense of pride slowly came to an end in the late 90's when the government bought the majority share of the in debt company from Butch Stewart. To make matters worse the effects of 9/11 and the following slow down in the airline industry meant that the company continued to lose money, much to the chagrin of Jamaicans, as it was frustrating to continue to fund a dieing airline with the public's money.

The frustration continued as the government became desperate and decided to divest the airline to whomever would want to purchase it, however this wasn't working out for the government. Their efforts seemed doubled recently however as it seemed to be some part of the IMF deal that before the fund lends Jamaica any funds, and this time it seemed more people were placing bids for the cash strapped airline, and it seemed sure that it would be sold to the Trinidadians who have already bought up so many of our local companies. This brought about much groans from Jamaicans as well as... well we're pretty tired of being some sort of Trinidadian subsidiary.

Now I dont know if this is the reason why but it seems that the employees of Air Jamaica have put together a bold idea wherein they would purchase the national airline and manage it themselves. To me this is a brilliant idea and while it will put the employees at a great risk (especially as the airline industry is such a fragile one) it should definitely be looked to with greater interest than selling to an outside company/country.

Essentially we have to remember something, Air Jamaica is as Vincent Morrison put it in the Jamaica Observer Article linked above is one of Jamaica's most important assets. The amount of people that stand to lose if Air Jamaica is sold is massive, once the company is sold it can be assumed that the purchasing company will replace almost all the current staff with people whom it wishes (most of which will probably be Trinidadian). Think of the backlash as all the people employed to Air Jamaica now have to worry about their jobs in this current economic climate? Oh and also remmeber the more than $28 Billion that would have to be spent to make the positions of the workers redundant... that's also coming out of the public purse.

Instead of selling out and giving up as we usually do, we should try to keep the company local, it will definitely be a more efficient company (ever see how hard somebody works when they know that they stand to lose money?), the airlines problems will be shifted away from the public purse and we will still maintain that sense of pride which we always have thanks to Air Jamaica...

Come on Bruce... do the right thing for once