Fly Jamaica expanding

Ronald Reece

(Jamaica Observer) Fly Jamaica aims to service a major South American city with the acquisition of its new aircraft.

The route expansion will allow the airline to maintain a higher passenger count without having to hunt to fill seats servicing competitive US cities, according to Paul Ronald Reece.

The airline’s CEO said that the move would attract Latin tourists travelling into Montego Bay.

“There are millions in that city who want to travel,” he said while officially declining to release the name of the South American city for competitive concerns.

Negotiations are still underway, but the company already flew to that city and held discussions with the Inter-American Devel-opment Bank (IDB), regulators and tour operators which service that territory.

“They want us to come there… you go where you can fill the seats,” he reasoned.

The Boeing 767 aeroplane should start flying this year and will add to the Boeing 757 which the airline now utilises. The airline ultimately wants two 757s and two 767s.

Fly Jamaica currently provides scheduled service to the North American cities of New York and Toronto as well as to Guyana and Jamaica.

In July, passengers experienced delays with the untimely maintenance of the aircraft. He told the Observer that the second plane would also serve as redundancy in the event of maintenance delays.

“So you have two aeroplanes. One on a hard schedule, the other on a soft schedule to back up the first one,” he said of the Boeing 767 which seats 246 passengers.

Reece indicated that the airline operates an average passenger load factor of