Johng,
I think you may want to brush up a bit on the history of Air Jamaica. Air Jamaica lost money 40 out of its 42 years of existence, amounting to about $1.54 billion.
Stewart along with Canadian investors owned part of it for only 10 of those 42 years (1994-2004). I flew Air J many times during that decade, and loved their US$50 Negril to Kingston flights. I never once felt obligated to go to any Sandals property and had no connection to Sandals whatsoever. Could you please present some facts to back up your claim, "before it fell into bankruptcy the airline that he was using to benefit his hotel chains and his pals!" ?
Air Jamaica, originally British owned Jamaica Air, was never a profitable venture. The Jamaican government divested and reinvested several times when it was losing money and investors. This is a Caribbean issue as this Barbados article states:
https://barbadosfreepress.wordpress....-be-necessary/
Here is the first readers comment from 2008:
"Rohan on June 15, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Agreed. It’s the same here in the U.S.
Gov’t bail out->Airline resurgence-> Airline mismanagement->Airline Bankruptcy->Gov’t Bail out
and the cycle continues.
There has only been one consistently profitable airline and that’s Southwest: No frills, no first class, no assigned seating, only fly one type of plane for the cost efficiency, and treat your employees well. It’s not rocket science.
Oh well.."
And here is a Gleaner article from 2008 explaining the situation as it was then:
http://old.jamaica-gleaner.com/glean...business7.html
