Jamaica’s aviation sector on the rebound

Jamaica’s travel and tourism industry is on a trajectory to make a full recovery from the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic by next year, three years ahead of the original projected date of 2026, President of the Airports Authority of Jamaica, Audley Deidrick, said last Friday.

“With the rapid rate of our aviation traffic recovery for 2022, it is now safe to forecast that Jamaica’s aviation traffic will make full recovery to the 2019 pre-COVID level in 2023. That is a whopping three years ahead of the six years projected at the beginning of the pandemic,” he said.

This year started at a sluggish pace, but after the first quarter, there were signs of a rebound, Deidrick told a Norman Manley International Airport forum at the Talk of the Town, The Jamaica Pegasus hotel, New Kingston. The combination of new strains of the coronavirus, the Ukraine-Russia war, and traffic protocols introduced by the United Kingdom and the United States of America threatened to put a damper on the outlook, but then things began to change.

“From as early as April 2022, a resurrection of the traffic growth began to set in, such that by June 2022, Sangster International Airport’s traffic for the month was almost equalling that of June 2019 and by September 2022, Sangster International Airport traffic for the month was 16 per cent above 2019. It took Norman Manley International up to September 2022 to trump the September 2019 traffic by two per cent.

RECOVERY

“Based on the rapid recovery phase of our aviation traffic, supported by the growth in tourism, it is now anticipated that by the end of December 2022, our total airport traffic will recover to approximately 90 per cent of the 2019 level. However, with Norman Manley International Airport recovering at a slower pace than Sangster International Airport, Norman Manley International is expected to reach approximately 86 per cent of the 2019 level by December, while Sangster International should reach 91 per cent by that time,” Deidrick said.

Meanwhile, Fernando Lorence, chief executive officer of PAC Kingston Airport Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacifico (GAP), which operates the Montego Bay and Kingston airports, explained that disruptions in the global supply chain continue to hinder rehabilitation and expansion plans.

“We saw significant delays in a number of projects that we had planned to complete, and there are still some that have not got off the ground,” he admitted. This was due largely to the inability to obtain in a timely way, equipment that has been ordered for several months, he pointed out.

Despite this, Jamaica’s recovery in aviation traffic continues to outpace other territories, according to the latest report from the Airports Council International World Report, published on October 6.

“Air travel should see a continued uptick overall in the second half of 2022, moving the industry closer to its full recovery – still forecast for 2024.

“During the first two quarters of the year 2022, global passenger volume was 1.3 billion and 1.7 billion, which are 62 per cent and 75.2 per cent of 2019 levels. Compared to the projected baseline (2019), the estimate traffic losses represent a loss of 44.4 per cent 32.2 per cent, respectively,” the report said.