The Jamaican public goes to the polls in a couple of days time – December 29, 2011 to be exact.
The current Prime Minister of Jamaica is a young man named Mr Andrew Holness of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), not yet 40 years old. He became leader of his party, and therefore the Jamaican Prime Minister, a couple of months ago when the incumbent JLP leader – Mr Bruce Golding - stepped down due to “personal reasons”.
In exiting prematurely Mr Golding in effect anointed the “younger generation” to inherit the leadership role of the party and Mr Holness assumed this position unchallenged (wisely) by his colleagues in the ruling JLP party.
SUCCESSION & SUCCESSS IN JAMAICAN POLITICS
It seemed a familiar old story to Jamaica. Over 5 years ago a one Ms Portia Simpson Miller became Prime Minister of Jamaica in May 2006 through an unelected national process when Mr P J Patterson of the Peoples National Party stepped down after 14 years in power.
However unlike, Mr Patterson who himself was given the mantle of leadership by Mr Michael Manley (who retired due to ill health in 1992) and then went on to win the national elections (not once but 3 times) in 1993 (and subsequently in 1997 & 2002), Ms Portia Miller served 18 months, then called a national election which she lost in September 2007.
So Mr Holness was faced with a similar situation – should he go, more or less, straight to get a mandate from the Jamaican public or should he serve out the remaining 12 months of the JLP’s entitled term and then call the national elections? He chose to go to the polls, which as I write, is imminently upon the nation. Was it the right call for him? Time will tell!!
At the risk of stating things prematurely, the run-up to the elections in Jamaica this time has been markedly peaceful and it seems as though this year has been a turning point in the maturing of the country – at least politically. In hindsight a key milestone could have been the “taking out” of Dudus Coke by the Jamaican army in a gun battle with his supporters in Trench Town. Mr Coke was later captured and extradited to face criminal charges in the USA. Perhaps the other criminal gangs have been sent a message that no one is indispensible and we are at a period of reflection and stock taking on the “contract” between local power brokers – armed and unarmed. Or is Jamaica in the “lull before the storm” which would see the potential emergence of a new criminal order and political dimension?
Some say Mr Golding paid the ultimate political price for that action of confrontation in his own constituency with a leading “don” – although not without great hesitation and anguish on his part, it turned out to be “a selfless act for the greater national good”. National crime rates have been noticeably reduced in the subsequent months of 2011. It seems the USA did Jamaica a favour in forcing through this extradition action.
FUTURE PATHWAYS - THE OPTIONS
So whither goes Jamaica now? On the one hand the existing party came into power during the onset of a terrible global recession and has weathered the storm creditably. The ridiculous high interest rates offered on Government Bond schemes for decades, unsustainably reminiscent of a Ponzi scheme, were cut somewhat (and could do with some further trimming). Crime statistics came down as mentioned above and the national economy even grew. This is more than could be said for the previous administration which, while the world around Jamaica enjoyed a boom fuelled by low interest rates, low fuel costs and emerging Eastern economies (and now a bust), cocooned itself in a nest of economic stagnation for the most part – notwithstanding Highway 2000 and the Spanish Hotel investment programme.
Does the country need change for any particular reason and what will change bring? Change in such poorer developing countries, brought about by elections after a maximum of 5 years, seems very wasteful. It takes a year or 2 for the new Government to shape its initiatives (and put its people in place etc) and then as things start to get going again it is time for another election. (Mind you nothing as daft as the USA elections which are far too frequent and extravagant at 4 years apart).
More recently, as has happened in Trinidad & Tobago, the new Government upon assumption of power appear to set about digging for evidence of corruption and malpractice by its predecessors with which to “sling mud” at them. More time and expense spent on issues, which although important, should not be allowed to happen in the first place. Like a number of other areas of life, globally, it would seem that the structure and operation of electoral politics is antiquated and not fit for purpose. Like existing Education and Health systems, the Political System needs an overhaul - but what to do?
For now back to elections in Jamaica. The historical record shows that the Jamaican electorate usually give the party in power a couple of electoral terms (8-10 years) to prove itself and this is likely to happen again. The only exception to this in 50 years has been Mr P J Patterson who won three elections in a row but he has retired from politics, apparently.
Alas, only time will tell - may the team that is best for Jamaica win!!
Monday, 26 December 2011
RedJet - The New Caribbean Airline
The year 2011 marked the beginning of a new airline serving the Caribbean. In time of recession in the western economies it appears to be a brave move; yet in business some of the best commercial opportunities present themselves when the status quo of a sector is being radically challenged by adverse prevailing conditions.
RedJet is based out of Barbados and began with a simple route to Trinidad. It then rapidly expanded its operations, in the same year, to include the destinations of Jamaica (Kingston), Guyana, St Lucia and Antigua.
If RedJet is successful it will have done more to integrate the English speaking Caribbean region than any number of speeches and meetings by regional politicians or by numerous CARICOM treaties and communiques. We the regional citizens of the Caribbean should welcome it as it makes the fundamental issue of getting around the region affordable or at least injects some competition into the cost and ease of regional travel.
ROOM FOR TWO (or THREE)?
At present the jury is out as to whether RedJet will succeed. The initial appeal of the eye catching low fares publicised are soon tempered when the complexities of the airfare structure are revealed and all is added up. Yes it’s cheaper, but by how much and is it worth it? The travelling public will undergo an educational process to understand how this optimisation-of-income model can work for the airline and also for them. Yet the operations and principles of an INTERNET-based airline (as opposed to a low fare airline) is a tried and proven one and it is in EVERYONES' interests that RedJet succeeds!!
At present RedJet is taking on the incumbents in their own market, flying to same destination airports. Both Caribbean Airlines and LIAT have been restructured in recent years, with the former having just acquired Air Jamaica and suffering the symptoms of indigestion as it assimilates that airline with a TWO BRANDs, ONE AIRLINE marketing strategy.
Caribbean Airlines was in danger of becoming a complacent monopoly in serving the major islands of the Caribbean region. Service levels to its customers were not visibly improving post-merger and I have yet to witness any attempt to sincerely consult with its customer base in a marketing questionnaire survey, for example. The benefits of its frequent flyer programme are neither easily accessible nor user-friendly and its online services are still rather basic – although I note some attempts now to improve functionality directly to the end-users (perhaps in response to RedJet trail blazing campaign).
The window of opportunity for Caribbean Airlines to engage with the substantial, patriotic and highly mobile Jamaican Diaspora, who patronised Air Jamaica, is closing gradually with the passage of time. Previous destinations served by Air Jamaica from Jamaica to London, Atlanta, Washington, Chicago, etc. have not been re-instated. In response to RedJet’s competitive entry into its Caribbean regional market space Caribbean Airlines should revise and expedite this option. In spite of the USA economic downturn (and Canada is not in this USA boat) the North American travel market remains huge - both for Caribbean Diaspora and other North American citizens.
The merger of the Jamaican and Trinidadian cultures and mind-sets into the operations of one organisation will not be easy BUT it is a prerequisite if Caribbean Airlines is to succeed commercially – it has no choice and I wish it well.
LIAT, on the other hand, unfortunately, has less to fear for now as it principally links up the smaller islands of the Caribbean region. It operates, unchallenged, with a service level that leaves much to be desired. On a recent business trip around such islands I was treated by LIAT to a cancelled flight; a stranded plane; an engineer being flown out from Barbados out to fix the plane in St Lucia; a rigmarole of entry into Barbados procedure to go through SECURITY to re-board the same plane and nearly missing it 10 minutes later; angry people for whom LIAT had lost their luggage; and finally a revised routing of the plane to arrive hours later than scheduled. It would have made good script for a comedy movie if it didn’t so seriously mess up people’s plans, including my own.
RedJet – FUTURE VISION
This new entrant, RedJet, is in that stage of building critical mass to become sustainable as an airline operator. It is vital that it keeps its eyes and mind open to market opportunities that present themselves and respond accordingly. Although at first it may be taking on Caribbean Airlines head-to-head in some routes it needs to grow, both itself and the overall travel market, in a way that lead to a win-win scenario.
One of the premises of such airlines is that their low prices will stimulate the existing marketplace for new customer segment of travellers to emerge. These might be week-end shoppers or vacationers for the region, the overseas student who needs to get home more often, business people expanding to operate regionally, multiple destination tourists, and so on. We will soon see if the Caribbean is ready for this.
However RedJet should also seek to open up new non-competitive routes with third country destinations that are staring it in the face. Airport destinations in Spanish speaking countries in the Caribbean, Central America and even Mexico should be evaluated. Maybe even tourist dominated airports in these countries could serve as low cost entry points. (Montego Bay-to-Cancun anyone?) Personally I would like to see connections between Kingston and Mexico City re-established and a link from Montego Bay to Brazil started. These countries have cities with huge metropolitan populations and their economies are still alive and kicking. I am sure Spanish-owned hotels, like RUI in Jamaica, eagerly await such potential guests.
Furthermore, the un-served people who need to get around the Caribbean but who cannot (easily) get visas to transit USA (usually via MIA) are also another obvious new target group.
And finally RedJet should not forget AIR CARGO – it’s another valuable income stream for them and is crying out to be provided across the region by businesses and individuals.
And what of CARICOM/CARIFORUM?
At some point RedJet and Caribbean Airlines will have to accept each other’s long term presence. Then they will see the benefit of feeding travellers into each other’s routes and creating even more synergistic hubs and spokes air-route nodes to better serve the Caribbean traveller.
In the meantime these airlines should engage and lobby the Governments of the Caribbean region, individually and collectively, to ensure that through diplomatic negotiations Caribbean people have minimal hassle (for visa requirements etc.) to getting to visit third countries such as Mexico and others in Central & South America.
Such an action will facilitate the potential for developing substantial air traffic for the future and redound to everyone’s benefit.
Thursday, 23 December 2010
A Caribbean Airline for the Caribbean?
This year saw the formation at last of what may become a truly Caribbean Airline:
Caribbean Airlines acquired Air Jamaica.
An acquisition which has yet to lead to a successful merger; the latter being necessary for economic sustainability of the newly formed enterprise. But these things take time as those who deal in Mergers and Acquisitions know only too well and sometimes time alone is not enough to ensure success.
For what we have are 2 different airlines operating different business models. Simply keeping the airlines operating in the same manner post-acquisition, side by side, will not be enough. It’s a matter of deriving synergies from each other and creating an entirely new operational model by disassembling parts of what they do and reassembling them - like a new jigsaw puzzle.
Caribbean Airlines serves mainly its Trinidadian and Tobagonian citizens to key North American metropolises – New York, Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Toronto - a few capitals in South America - Caracas, Paramaribo, Georgetown - and five Caribbean countries - Antigua, Barbados, Grenada, St Martin, Jamaica.
Air Jamaica now only serves Nassau, Toronto, Philadelphia, New York and Fort Lauderdale from its 2 airports in Jamaica – Kingston and Montego Bay. This group of 5 destinations is substantially reduced from the over 12 destinations the airline serviced only a few years ago.
At first glance these 5 destinations don’t really offer much by way of an acquisition. And they don’t.
The true value of Air Jamaica, apart from its important skilled employees and airline infrastructure - which took years to develop - is the latent potential of the 2 hub airports at Kingston and Montego Bay and the millions of passengers who flew Air Jamaica when it was at its peak of operational scale about a decade ago.
These prospective “prior passengers” are a combination of tourists and diaspora (overseas Jamaicans) living in key cities like Atlanta, Washington, Baltimore, Los Angeles, London, Manchester and so on. So the obvious question is can the new airline reconnect with these potential customers in a way that offers them even greater value for their money in air travel? And can Caribbean Airlines earn more incremental income from such a target group? I think so. However the operational model has to be reconfigured along the lines of servicing the wider Caribbean and the needs of its peoples - not 2 airlines operating from 2 different countries servicing 2 different groups.
To start with we need to configure the new Airline as having 2 or even 3 hubs – say Port of Spain, Kingston and Montego Bay. One hub services North America; a second hub serves the Northern Caribbean and Central America; the third hub acts as a gateway to the Southern Caribbean and South America. Feeders into these hubs will be from other hubs (including in Jamaica’s case many other, mainly US airlines that still fly to its airports) as well as third country destinations whose passengers cannot get a US visa to transit that country or want to avoid flying through Miami and New York in particular to connect globally to cities like London and elsewhere. The air traffic carried will be a good robust mix of tourists (of diverse types), business people, VFR’s (visiting friends and family) and opportunistic travellers.
The size of this other prospective customer market of “opportunistic travellers” is not to be under-estimated. There are many countries in the region which do not have a national carrier which would look after their citizen’s interests as a priority or are not able to for whatever reason. Cuba comes to mind as do several countries in Central America. With the pervasiveness of the internet and booking flights directly online via websites becoming more popular (if written in many languages it can become available to others previously excluded) the potential market size increases dramatically. Of course to exploit the competitive edge of accessibility to the new Caribbean airline, staff must be able to communicate in these other languages and the Governments of the region must permit visa-free travel to and from third countries.
Another benefit of this model will be the potential for multi-destination vacations in the Caribbean without multiple changes or “lay-overs” at airports. This presumes more direct non-stop flights between Jamaica and Trinidad / Tobago for example and non-stops between Barbados and Jamaica. These should not crowd out the much needed island-hoppers but these should only really stop once on any single trip.
With such a model opening new destinations becomes potentially more viable than if it were a single national carrier serving mainly one country. In particular, it provides possibilities to more greatly link Spanish speaking countries with English speaking ones in the Caribbean and Central American region. This offers the region exciting opportunities – like reconnecting Kingston with Mexico City after decades of disconnection. Also the ridiculous routing of travelling far north to go back south (South Americans going via Miami to visit the Caribbean) will be made redundant and Trinidad could benefit from more rapidly developing its tourist market and air hub with South American countries.
I agree the new configuration of hubs and air-routes is not something to be undertaken lightly as the challenge is that it is the WHOLE picture taken together that determines the true economics of the model. Furthermore, it is not a simple additive model. One small component (air route, flight times, connection times etc) of the model may disproportionately make the overall model economics much more profitable or much less viable. And the market takes time to respond to new offerings before the whole picture becomes discernible.
Developing new airline routes is always a chicken and egg story. No passengers fly the route because it does not exist. The route does not exist because no people fly between the 2 destinations. It’s an expensive investment process developing a genuinely new route from scratch. However this need not be the case for Caribbean Airlines if it acts quickly as some of these routes will have been flown before by “prior passengers” and are merely being revived. These reconnections will give birth to multiplier effects such as Diaspora travellers bringing other travellers (from their host country) with them as new visitors to the Caribbean region.
I hope that the new Caribbean Airlines can think outside the box and boldly reconstitute its operational model to capitalise on the latent synergies that the combined airlines offer, thereby maximising its economic return. In that way the full potential of a truly regional airline can be realised and substantial economic benefits accrue to Caribbean citizens and our friends who visit us from outside this beautiful region of the world.
Caribbean Airlines acquired Air Jamaica.
An acquisition which has yet to lead to a successful merger; the latter being necessary for economic sustainability of the newly formed enterprise. But these things take time as those who deal in Mergers and Acquisitions know only too well and sometimes time alone is not enough to ensure success.
For what we have are 2 different airlines operating different business models. Simply keeping the airlines operating in the same manner post-acquisition, side by side, will not be enough. It’s a matter of deriving synergies from each other and creating an entirely new operational model by disassembling parts of what they do and reassembling them - like a new jigsaw puzzle.
Caribbean Airlines serves mainly its Trinidadian and Tobagonian citizens to key North American metropolises – New York, Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Toronto - a few capitals in South America - Caracas, Paramaribo, Georgetown - and five Caribbean countries - Antigua, Barbados, Grenada, St Martin, Jamaica.
Air Jamaica now only serves Nassau, Toronto, Philadelphia, New York and Fort Lauderdale from its 2 airports in Jamaica – Kingston and Montego Bay. This group of 5 destinations is substantially reduced from the over 12 destinations the airline serviced only a few years ago.
At first glance these 5 destinations don’t really offer much by way of an acquisition. And they don’t.
The true value of Air Jamaica, apart from its important skilled employees and airline infrastructure - which took years to develop - is the latent potential of the 2 hub airports at Kingston and Montego Bay and the millions of passengers who flew Air Jamaica when it was at its peak of operational scale about a decade ago.
These prospective “prior passengers” are a combination of tourists and diaspora (overseas Jamaicans) living in key cities like Atlanta, Washington, Baltimore, Los Angeles, London, Manchester and so on. So the obvious question is can the new airline reconnect with these potential customers in a way that offers them even greater value for their money in air travel? And can Caribbean Airlines earn more incremental income from such a target group? I think so. However the operational model has to be reconfigured along the lines of servicing the wider Caribbean and the needs of its peoples - not 2 airlines operating from 2 different countries servicing 2 different groups.
To start with we need to configure the new Airline as having 2 or even 3 hubs – say Port of Spain, Kingston and Montego Bay. One hub services North America; a second hub serves the Northern Caribbean and Central America; the third hub acts as a gateway to the Southern Caribbean and South America. Feeders into these hubs will be from other hubs (including in Jamaica’s case many other, mainly US airlines that still fly to its airports) as well as third country destinations whose passengers cannot get a US visa to transit that country or want to avoid flying through Miami and New York in particular to connect globally to cities like London and elsewhere. The air traffic carried will be a good robust mix of tourists (of diverse types), business people, VFR’s (visiting friends and family) and opportunistic travellers.
The size of this other prospective customer market of “opportunistic travellers” is not to be under-estimated. There are many countries in the region which do not have a national carrier which would look after their citizen’s interests as a priority or are not able to for whatever reason. Cuba comes to mind as do several countries in Central America. With the pervasiveness of the internet and booking flights directly online via websites becoming more popular (if written in many languages it can become available to others previously excluded) the potential market size increases dramatically. Of course to exploit the competitive edge of accessibility to the new Caribbean airline, staff must be able to communicate in these other languages and the Governments of the region must permit visa-free travel to and from third countries.
Another benefit of this model will be the potential for multi-destination vacations in the Caribbean without multiple changes or “lay-overs” at airports. This presumes more direct non-stop flights between Jamaica and Trinidad / Tobago for example and non-stops between Barbados and Jamaica. These should not crowd out the much needed island-hoppers but these should only really stop once on any single trip.
With such a model opening new destinations becomes potentially more viable than if it were a single national carrier serving mainly one country. In particular, it provides possibilities to more greatly link Spanish speaking countries with English speaking ones in the Caribbean and Central American region. This offers the region exciting opportunities – like reconnecting Kingston with Mexico City after decades of disconnection. Also the ridiculous routing of travelling far north to go back south (South Americans going via Miami to visit the Caribbean) will be made redundant and Trinidad could benefit from more rapidly developing its tourist market and air hub with South American countries.
I agree the new configuration of hubs and air-routes is not something to be undertaken lightly as the challenge is that it is the WHOLE picture taken together that determines the true economics of the model. Furthermore, it is not a simple additive model. One small component (air route, flight times, connection times etc) of the model may disproportionately make the overall model economics much more profitable or much less viable. And the market takes time to respond to new offerings before the whole picture becomes discernible.
Developing new airline routes is always a chicken and egg story. No passengers fly the route because it does not exist. The route does not exist because no people fly between the 2 destinations. It’s an expensive investment process developing a genuinely new route from scratch. However this need not be the case for Caribbean Airlines if it acts quickly as some of these routes will have been flown before by “prior passengers” and are merely being revived. These reconnections will give birth to multiplier effects such as Diaspora travellers bringing other travellers (from their host country) with them as new visitors to the Caribbean region.
I hope that the new Caribbean Airlines can think outside the box and boldly reconstitute its operational model to capitalise on the latent synergies that the combined airlines offer, thereby maximising its economic return. In that way the full potential of a truly regional airline can be realised and substantial economic benefits accrue to Caribbean citizens and our friends who visit us from outside this beautiful region of the world.
Monday, 2 February 2009
Fresh Thinking at Jamaica Tourist Board please!!
The adverts are back. They are enticing; seductive; alluring; beautiful. They display scenery only found in Jamaica and it is indeed Jamaica that the ads are promoting.
More specifically they invite the observer to come and visit Jamaica. There’s nothing wrong with that, surely, a beautiful advert?
But there is a lot wrong with it.
I stare at the advertising billboard as I await a train to London from a train platform in South London. It’s a big billboard and the advert is part of a London-wide campaign so it’s bound to have cost a lot of money - money from the Jamaica Tourist Board that the Government and people of Jamaica can ill-afford to waste. But this is a waste of money for sure.
That billboard fills the foreground of my vista and in the background the sky is grey. Yes, wouldn’t we all rather be there in sunny Jamaica than be here under the grey skies of England. But in the mid-distance there is a partly completed building just outside the grounds of the train station. This is an unfinished 4 storey apartment complex which would have been worth a few million pounds upon completion. It has on its grounds a 50 foot builder’s crane which hasn’t been used for the past 3 months. In fact there hasn’t been a single worker on this building site in the same 3 month period and the chances are that is not likely to change for the next year or so.
A year ago such apartment complexes were a sound investment for the average London citizen but now it’s all as though a dream. Now London is full of unfinished developments and people are losing their jobs left, right and centre. My how the world has changed in a matter of months!!
This unfinished building represents what comes between UK prospective tourists leaving the grey skies of London behind for a trip to beautiful Jamaica. For those who were unaware, we are in the midst of a major financial and economic crisis in the UK. So trying to get people to spend money they don’t have on any far-flung holiday with this shotgun, blunderbuss, marketing approach is a waste of money.
In a way it sadly illustrates the bankruptcy of ideas at the current Jamaica Tourist Board.
Its Old Hat!! No innovation!! The JTB is relying on expensive billboard advertising London-wide campaigns to market Jamaica but it’s woefully out of step with the average customer’s reality.
This sort of campaign campaign is now an invalid approach to bolstering the flagging tourism industry in Jamaica.
So thank you JTB for brightening up the London skyline with beautiful photos of Jamaica and making me feel homesick. But stop wasting the Jamaican tax-payers money and start some real innovative cost-effective, 21st Century marketing that will more cost-effectively entice likely travellers - those who can and will - to visit Jamaica.
Sunday, 1 February 2009
The Cancer that is Corruption
I just returned to the UK from spending about 3 weeks in Jamaica – not a holiday more a working visit. It allowed me once more to immerse myself in the everyday living of my home country after playing tourist to it for the past 2 decades.
It was great to be home. My experience there had its fair share of enjoyment but the over-riding impression was what I have to term, I suppose, “shock and awe” at what passes for normal daily activity there. As I like to explain to my UK friends, if what persisted on the criminal front here in the UK like “wha-a –go-on” in Jamaica “dis ya time”, we would have to call it a WAR. I mean 1,500 people murdered per year in a population of 2.5 million (Jamaica) is equivalent to over 30,000 people in a population of close to 60 million (UK). It’s a very bloody sort of insidious social warfare at that. I had 3 personal incidents in the space of my less than 3 weeks visit which put me in the picture of what “really a go-on in Jamdown”.
During my stay there, on one occasion, I heard about 8 gunshots go off at around 10pm at night in my uptown neighbourhood. Reports the following day informed me it was a licensed firearm holder dispensing justice as he was confronted at his gate by 3 assailants, one holding a firearm. He had killed 2 of them and the third escaped. I cannot fault him on defending himself in such circumstances but it made the Gordon House debate raging at the time in the country about capital punishment an oxymoron. I mean, not only is capital punishment still officially on the law books of the land but it is meted out almost daily on the streets by a wide range of Jamaicans – police, soldiers and such licensed firearm holders. The Justice System has broken down in the beloved country and this incident was a manifestation of that fact.
On another occasion driving through the rural town of Port Maria, the traffic that I was caught up in ground to a slow moving crawl. It was about 3pm and children leaving school were part of the throng of people on and off the sidewalks. Something, one sensed, was in the air but as an unseasoned visitor little was I to know what would happen next. A man ran down the middle of the street right past my car with something in his right hand up in the air. Not running with panic but at a pace of serious intent – like he had done this before and his life depended on it. He was followed by another man with what was clearly a gun, more considerately held pointed down towards the tarmac. He was not more than 6 seconds behind the first man. Then, after another 5 seconds, a more heavily armed uniformed policeman followed them – again passing my car - and then it all then began to make sense as behind them all came a police vehicle, siren blaring. The crowd looked on – some with animated curiosity and some with nonchalance – perhaps, notwithstanding my surprise, this event was not so unusual for rural Port Maria in 2008. The leading man – the wanted criminal gunman - turned off the road and went down into a gully course of sorts and some schoolchildren even went to follow him to see where he was going. Some of the town elders, with sense, chased the children back. No gunshots were heard subsequently so one can surmise he made good his escape and mercifully no innocent bystanders were afflicted by what is the scourge of gun culture in Jamaica, on that occasion. Law and Order has broken down all over Jamaica Land we Love and this incident was a manifestation of that fact.
Again a matter of perspective I guess but Jamaica appears to me to be the “Wild, Wild West”. We could do well look to the history of America and its gun culture - both its cowboy days of “settling the west” and to the likes of Al Capone in his heyday in Chicago - to learn a few lessons about what causes this lawlessness and how to address this rather serious and unacceptable state of affairs.
But it was the final personal incident that crystallised for me the root of the problem in Jamaica today. The least lethal, "innocuous" even, of my experiences provided an epiphany moment. I had parked my car on a Saturday morning on Knutsford Bouvelard to go buy a pattie in Tastees. I hadn’t been inside more than 5 minutes when I came out to see my car jacked up and ready for towing away by one of 2 wreckers plainly now in sight. There were a cadre of policemen and policewomen around, some observing at a distance. I explained to the tow truck driver that I was resident overseas and was not conversant with the law regarding parking on weekends in what was a dead New Kingston. True a yellow line marked the edge of the pavement but there were no signs annunciating on the parking restrictions in force and I was accustomed to a single yellow meaning “No Parking” only on busy week work-days. Of course “Ignorance of the Law is No Excuse” except in this case, in Jamaica now – as the events were to prove as they unfolded - “THE LAW IS AN ASS”. So we got into a discussion with a policewoman hovering nearby with some of the associated paperwork of this legal infringement – within earshot but not intervening.
The conversation was intriguing and masterfully steered by him to achieve his ultimate objective as I was soon to find out. I explained that I was a visitor and showed him my UK driving license. Was he going to “mash up” my weekend? I said I would ride with him to the downtown pound where the car was “destined” so I could pay the fine and recover the car quickly.
But this was not the reply he was looking for, clearly. Call me naïve initially, and in the end complicit, but eventually I was enlightened to pay him JA$3,000 on the spot rather than find my own way to pay the JA$4,000 fine downtown. His friend took the money on the “blind side” to the nearby cops and he let the car down. I had to enact the charade of getting into the car as a technicality of this accepted alternative to “due legal process”. The policewoman moved in to hand back the paperwork to the tow driver and then moved on to join her colleagues after the convoluted transaction was sealed.
So I had, unceremoniously, joined the countless other “otherwise law-abiding” Jamaicans to become party to this corrupt state of affairs and right under the approving nose of the local police force – who no doubt, upon reflection of the play enacted, were in on the scam from the very beginning.
Corruption is thriving in Jamaica and, like a cancer, it is corrupting the unwitting citizens of the beautiful land and this incident was a clear manifestation of that fact.
And so there we have it. My trip home was an educational experience for an overseas, uninitiated visitor about the breakdown of law and order arising from a barely functioning legal system in a systemic corrupt framework that is now Jamaica.
If my late father – who had helped frame the legal and justice system for Jamaica as a newly independent country forty-six years ago - had not been cremated, he would surely be turning in his grave.
It was great to be home. My experience there had its fair share of enjoyment but the over-riding impression was what I have to term, I suppose, “shock and awe” at what passes for normal daily activity there. As I like to explain to my UK friends, if what persisted on the criminal front here in the UK like “wha-a –go-on” in Jamaica “dis ya time”, we would have to call it a WAR. I mean 1,500 people murdered per year in a population of 2.5 million (Jamaica) is equivalent to over 30,000 people in a population of close to 60 million (UK). It’s a very bloody sort of insidious social warfare at that. I had 3 personal incidents in the space of my less than 3 weeks visit which put me in the picture of what “really a go-on in Jamdown”.
During my stay there, on one occasion, I heard about 8 gunshots go off at around 10pm at night in my uptown neighbourhood. Reports the following day informed me it was a licensed firearm holder dispensing justice as he was confronted at his gate by 3 assailants, one holding a firearm. He had killed 2 of them and the third escaped. I cannot fault him on defending himself in such circumstances but it made the Gordon House debate raging at the time in the country about capital punishment an oxymoron. I mean, not only is capital punishment still officially on the law books of the land but it is meted out almost daily on the streets by a wide range of Jamaicans – police, soldiers and such licensed firearm holders. The Justice System has broken down in the beloved country and this incident was a manifestation of that fact.
On another occasion driving through the rural town of Port Maria, the traffic that I was caught up in ground to a slow moving crawl. It was about 3pm and children leaving school were part of the throng of people on and off the sidewalks. Something, one sensed, was in the air but as an unseasoned visitor little was I to know what would happen next. A man ran down the middle of the street right past my car with something in his right hand up in the air. Not running with panic but at a pace of serious intent – like he had done this before and his life depended on it. He was followed by another man with what was clearly a gun, more considerately held pointed down towards the tarmac. He was not more than 6 seconds behind the first man. Then, after another 5 seconds, a more heavily armed uniformed policeman followed them – again passing my car - and then it all then began to make sense as behind them all came a police vehicle, siren blaring. The crowd looked on – some with animated curiosity and some with nonchalance – perhaps, notwithstanding my surprise, this event was not so unusual for rural Port Maria in 2008. The leading man – the wanted criminal gunman - turned off the road and went down into a gully course of sorts and some schoolchildren even went to follow him to see where he was going. Some of the town elders, with sense, chased the children back. No gunshots were heard subsequently so one can surmise he made good his escape and mercifully no innocent bystanders were afflicted by what is the scourge of gun culture in Jamaica, on that occasion. Law and Order has broken down all over Jamaica Land we Love and this incident was a manifestation of that fact.
Again a matter of perspective I guess but Jamaica appears to me to be the “Wild, Wild West”. We could do well look to the history of America and its gun culture - both its cowboy days of “settling the west” and to the likes of Al Capone in his heyday in Chicago - to learn a few lessons about what causes this lawlessness and how to address this rather serious and unacceptable state of affairs.
But it was the final personal incident that crystallised for me the root of the problem in Jamaica today. The least lethal, "innocuous" even, of my experiences provided an epiphany moment. I had parked my car on a Saturday morning on Knutsford Bouvelard to go buy a pattie in Tastees. I hadn’t been inside more than 5 minutes when I came out to see my car jacked up and ready for towing away by one of 2 wreckers plainly now in sight. There were a cadre of policemen and policewomen around, some observing at a distance. I explained to the tow truck driver that I was resident overseas and was not conversant with the law regarding parking on weekends in what was a dead New Kingston. True a yellow line marked the edge of the pavement but there were no signs annunciating on the parking restrictions in force and I was accustomed to a single yellow meaning “No Parking” only on busy week work-days. Of course “Ignorance of the Law is No Excuse” except in this case, in Jamaica now – as the events were to prove as they unfolded - “THE LAW IS AN ASS”. So we got into a discussion with a policewoman hovering nearby with some of the associated paperwork of this legal infringement – within earshot but not intervening.
The conversation was intriguing and masterfully steered by him to achieve his ultimate objective as I was soon to find out. I explained that I was a visitor and showed him my UK driving license. Was he going to “mash up” my weekend? I said I would ride with him to the downtown pound where the car was “destined” so I could pay the fine and recover the car quickly.
But this was not the reply he was looking for, clearly. Call me naïve initially, and in the end complicit, but eventually I was enlightened to pay him JA$3,000 on the spot rather than find my own way to pay the JA$4,000 fine downtown. His friend took the money on the “blind side” to the nearby cops and he let the car down. I had to enact the charade of getting into the car as a technicality of this accepted alternative to “due legal process”. The policewoman moved in to hand back the paperwork to the tow driver and then moved on to join her colleagues after the convoluted transaction was sealed.
So I had, unceremoniously, joined the countless other “otherwise law-abiding” Jamaicans to become party to this corrupt state of affairs and right under the approving nose of the local police force – who no doubt, upon reflection of the play enacted, were in on the scam from the very beginning.
Corruption is thriving in Jamaica and, like a cancer, it is corrupting the unwitting citizens of the beautiful land and this incident was a clear manifestation of that fact.
And so there we have it. My trip home was an educational experience for an overseas, uninitiated visitor about the breakdown of law and order arising from a barely functioning legal system in a systemic corrupt framework that is now Jamaica.
If my late father – who had helped frame the legal and justice system for Jamaica as a newly independent country forty-six years ago - had not been cremated, he would surely be turning in his grave.
Air Jamaica's Death Knell?
I read with further disappointment the intention of Air Jamaica to shed 6 of its 15 planes and drop 6 routes from its service schedule this year (Jamaica Observer January 28, 2009). This is sheer madness and it would be better for Air Jamaica to close down completely, and thereby entirely avoid the risk of running a loss in the future – as this seems to be its SOLE objective. How ironic that the Government of Jamaica wants to retain the name and brand of Air Jamaica in its proposed plans to sell the airline yet it is reducing the company to a “ghost” of an international airline with this reductionist strategy.
Air Jamaica, despite pleas from the Diaspora population in the UK, sold it London route (for peanuts to Virgin by the then Minister of Finance of the previous administration) back in 2007. This was another bad commercial decision by a civil servant. We Jamaicans in the UK are now suffering the consequences. Virgin flights in December 2009 to Kingston are costing £983 per person for its cheapest economy seat and BA is charging £1,158 per person – CHEAPEST ECONOMY. Their planes (Boeing 747’s and 777’s) will be fully booked nevertheless, and mostly by members of the Jamaican Diaspora in the UK. This is what Air Jamaica gave up when it dropped the London route. Now it wants to ditch the Miami route and others.
The problems facing Air Jamaica with its operating loss are not so much its COSTS of operation as using the INCORRECT BUSINES MODEL for running an airline in the 21st Century. No doubt this is what the Air France consultants will tell them when they arrive in Jamaica, spend several months and charge for their fees. Space does not permit me to elaborate on the possible solutions, but as a consultant myself one knows that to solve a problem one should start with correctly defining the realities of the issue. Here are a few basic points:
Point One – Air Jamaica is a Diaspora Airline.
Point Two – Air Jamaica cannot and should not compete head-to-head with US based carriers.
Point Three – Air Jamaica will require FURTHER investment to turn it around (note the distinction between “cost” and “investment”).
Point Four - Current economic global environment means it’s unlikely to get a private buyer / investment, even in a cut-down version it is now pursuing.
Point Five – In determining the cost of running an airline one should look at the FULL ECONOMIC cost and benefit analysis, not just bottom line profits.
Point Six - The Caribbean has been in need of a proper regional airline for some time now.
A possible new business model involves thinking outside the realms of conventional, conservative - dare I say it – archaic, public sector thinking in Jamaica. So we could, for example, swallow our national pride, people, and merge Air Jamaica with Caribbean Airways and let the Caribbean benefit from a properly sized international airline that can serve the region and its peoples well. (One can do all sorts of fancy things with marketing, like co-branding etc, if we feel the need to keep the name of Air Jamaica alive).
To be sure, if we continue along this path proposed of cut, cut, cutting Air Jamaica we will be killing it slowly in any event. The loss to the economy of JAMAICA will be catastrophic as such actions further weaken the economic contributions from its Diaporan population whose hard earned income will flow increasingly to the likes of BA and Virgin, good airlines though they are.
Air Jamaica, despite pleas from the Diaspora population in the UK, sold it London route (for peanuts to Virgin by the then Minister of Finance of the previous administration) back in 2007. This was another bad commercial decision by a civil servant. We Jamaicans in the UK are now suffering the consequences. Virgin flights in December 2009 to Kingston are costing £983 per person for its cheapest economy seat and BA is charging £1,158 per person – CHEAPEST ECONOMY. Their planes (Boeing 747’s and 777’s) will be fully booked nevertheless, and mostly by members of the Jamaican Diaspora in the UK. This is what Air Jamaica gave up when it dropped the London route. Now it wants to ditch the Miami route and others.
The problems facing Air Jamaica with its operating loss are not so much its COSTS of operation as using the INCORRECT BUSINES MODEL for running an airline in the 21st Century. No doubt this is what the Air France consultants will tell them when they arrive in Jamaica, spend several months and charge for their fees. Space does not permit me to elaborate on the possible solutions, but as a consultant myself one knows that to solve a problem one should start with correctly defining the realities of the issue. Here are a few basic points:
Point One – Air Jamaica is a Diaspora Airline.
Point Two – Air Jamaica cannot and should not compete head-to-head with US based carriers.
Point Three – Air Jamaica will require FURTHER investment to turn it around (note the distinction between “cost” and “investment”).
Point Four - Current economic global environment means it’s unlikely to get a private buyer / investment, even in a cut-down version it is now pursuing.
Point Five – In determining the cost of running an airline one should look at the FULL ECONOMIC cost and benefit analysis, not just bottom line profits.
Point Six - The Caribbean has been in need of a proper regional airline for some time now.
A possible new business model involves thinking outside the realms of conventional, conservative - dare I say it – archaic, public sector thinking in Jamaica. So we could, for example, swallow our national pride, people, and merge Air Jamaica with Caribbean Airways and let the Caribbean benefit from a properly sized international airline that can serve the region and its peoples well. (One can do all sorts of fancy things with marketing, like co-branding etc, if we feel the need to keep the name of Air Jamaica alive).
To be sure, if we continue along this path proposed of cut, cut, cutting Air Jamaica we will be killing it slowly in any event. The loss to the economy of JAMAICA will be catastrophic as such actions further weaken the economic contributions from its Diaporan population whose hard earned income will flow increasingly to the likes of BA and Virgin, good airlines though they are.
Thursday, 31 January 2008
Caribbean Regional Air Transport Delayed?
I note, with disappointment, the rejection by the Jamaican Government of the Airone application to start a Caribbean regional carrier based in
The reason given relates to the scheduled divestment of Air
In the meantime we, the Jamaican Diapsora in the
Airfares from the
Whist one can get reasonable deals on the said route for under £400 at the off-peak season this is of little comfort to FAMILIES who must travel at peak times and pay the extortionate fares.
What this will result in is fewer Diaspora families, who MUST travel during their children’s school holiday period, visiting
The weakening of the link between the UK Jamaican younger generation Diapsora and
An airline proposed by Airone could have provided a much needed service to the overseas Jamaican community where it is currently poorly serviced – the
As for Air Jamaica’s future lets hope its new owners have the substantial capital and vision necessary to take the airline to higher levels of performance and global presence and not just capture it as an adjunct to an existing outfit to milk the hapless Jamaican consumer be they at home or abroad!!
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