New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Support grows for nonstop flights between Conn., Jamaica
A longstanding proposal to establish nonstop routes between Bradley International Airport and Jamaica could finally take off in the near future, with state legislators and other supporters renewing the push to launch direct service to the island.
Proponents outlined their arguments for the plan in an online forum hosted Monday night by state Rep. Bobby Gibson, D-Windsor, and the Caribbean Trade Council. Gibson has introduced a bill calling on Windsor Locksbased Bradley to offer direct flights to the Jamaican capital of Kingston, while airport officials are also bullish about the scenario despite the disruption of the coronavirus pandemic.
“It’s a financial gain and success for our state — not only in terms of vacations and trips and visitations — but also in terms of cargo,” Gibson said during the forum. “This is also a social justice issue. For Connecticut to have one of the largest populations of Jamaicans in the Jamaican diaspora in the United States… it’s an injustice not to have a direct flight.”
For years, officials in Connecticut and Jamaica have sought to establish nonstop flights linking the state with the Caribbean nation, which has a population of about 3 million.
Those talks reflect the state’s large Jamaican-American community. Among the approximately 520,000 foreign-born state residents in 2018, seven percent were originally from Jamaica, according to the nonprofit and nonpartisan
American Immigration Council. Only India accounted for more of the state’s immigrant population, with a nine percent share.
“This bill is incredibly important for the continued economic development of the state of Connecticut and Jamaica as it pertains to cargo and it also addresses the needs of our community in relation to direct flights from Bradley to Jamaica,” Andrew Lawrence, president of the Caribbean Trade Council, said in a statement. “Direct flights will benefit Connecticut residents, business and medical professionals in terms of reducing wait times for connected flights and travel times to other airports, particularly for our disabled citizens and their limitations."
The nearest airports for Connecticut residents who want to fly nonstop to Jamaica — to either Kingston or the northwestern city of Montego Bay — have to depart from either John F. Kennedy International, Newark Liberty International or Boston Logan International.
Those flying from Bradley have to stop over at another airport such as Miami International to catch a connecting flight to the island. U.S. airlines that fly to Jamaica include JetBlue, Delta, United, American and Spirit.
The Bradley “catchment area” is generating about 94,000 Jamaica trips annually, according to Kevin Dillon, executive director of the Connecticut Airport Authority, which owns and operates Bradley. From that total, about 35,000 involve Bradley on “a connecting basis,” with some 28,000 flying to Montego Bay and the other 7,000 going to Kingston.
“We are very interested in developing this service… We do have a couple of target carriers, meaning carriers that we think are more likely to provide the service than others, and we continue to work with them,” Dillon said during the forum. “The airline needs to make that decision… But it is a matter of us convincing an airline that it’s going to be a profitable route for them.”
Dillon declined to identify those two “target carriers” because “this is a very competitive environment. We don’t want other airports in the region to understand who we’re talking to about what particular routes.”
To encourage carriers to establish nonstop flights to Jamaica, Dillon said the CAA would be willing to offer an incentives package that could include the waiving of two years’ worth of rates and charges, “meaning the airline can operate here at Bradley [for] two years at no cost on that particular route.”
Dillon also cited the possibility of “up to half-a-million dollars’ worth of marketing assistance to promote the availability of the route.”
Jamaica recorded about 4.2 million visitor arrivals in 2019, down 2 percent from 2018, according to the Jamaica Tourist Board.
“We have been looking to expand our visitor numbers, expand our air traffic — not just in Kingston, but Montego Bay,” said Francine Carter Henry, manager of tour operators and airlines for the Jamaica Tourist Board. “We do rely very heavily on the [Jamaican]
diaspora traffic for the Kingston arrivals, more so than Montego
Bay. But in recent years we have been expanding our push for more-tourism related activity in the Kingston capital.”
The legislation introduced by Gibson, House Bill 6075, outlines in its statement of purpose that it would “require” Bradley to offer direct flights to Kingston.
But the state legislature’s Transportation Committee “will not be proceeding with a public hearing on HB 6075 or with the bill as written,” according to state Rep. Roland Lemar, D-New Haven, the committee’s chairman.
“In screening, we determined that given the airline industry’s current global challenges, it made very little sense to statutorily mandate CAA offer specific flights to specific locations,” Lemar told Hearst Connecticut Media on Tuesday. “That being said, Rep. Gibson has done extraordinary work building the case and proving
the economics of such an offering, and I will be working with him and CAA directly to see what we need in order to make this flight a reality in the near future. And I look forward to revisiting this conversation in the coming year as the domestic and international travel recovers.”
In any case, Bradley would not need any legislation to start nonstop flights to Jamaica, according to CAA officials. Developing new routes can take years, but Dillon said launching nonstop service to Jamaica within the next year would be possible.
“I would anticipate that you would probably, if we were successful, have an announcement in the fall timeframe, with an early winter start,” Dillon said. “That would be the most lucrative timeframe from a leisure standpoint. But again, this is an ongoing effort.”