Hartley Neita, ContributorTHE FIRST airplanes to land in Jamaica were
flying boats. Their landing gear looked like canoes and the planes landed at the eastern end of the Kingston harbour.
And according to Olive Seniorin her Encyclopedia of Jamaican Heritage, vendors selling straw goods and souvenirs, would row out to these flying boats and try to sell their wares before the passengers got to land. Today, those entrepreneurs who were then regarded as culturally quaint, would be accused of harassment!
An airport was subsequently built near Plumb Point on the Palisadoes strip in 1941. The Palisadoes was once a series of islets which, over the years, was joined by sand and silt, and the airport was built on what was once the largest of the islets.
A competing venue at the
time Cumberland Pen in
St. Catherine. Later, there was a proposal to resite it in the Hellshire area.
MODERN STRUCTURE
The first building at the Palisadoes looked like a huge barn. Passengers, the airport staff, cab drivers and friends meeting passengers mingled until 1961 when a modern international airport was built.
At that time, more planes and passengers used the Palisadoes Airport than the Montego Bay Airport. One of the facilities of the former was a large area overlooking the tarmac which was called a waving gallery. Travelling by air then was still a novelty, and so whenever anyone was flying to Miami or New York, members of their family and friends went to the airport to see them off and to wave farewell as they crossed the
tarmac to the plane. The tarmac also became a picnic area on Sundays and public holidays, with scores of families crowding it to watch the planes arrive and depart.
THE 1950s
During the 1950s when hundreds of Jamaicans decided to migrate to England, the gallery was crammed with their many family members and friends who gathered to see them off.
The largest crowd ever, however, was the thousands of Rastafarians who congregated at the airport in April 1966 to welcome the arrival of the Emperor of Ethiopia, His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie. The waving gallery was a rainbow of colour with the Rastafarians wearing white robes and turbans of red, gold and green and carrying rods carved with symbols of lions and lines from the Bible.
From the night before his arrival, they came from all over Jamaica in trucks and buses and by 'walk-foot'. They spent
the night clapping, drumming, dancing, cheering and creating a din never heard before, or since, to welcome a visitor to Jamaica. Airport officials panicked because of fear that the weight of the crowd could cause the gallery to collapse. They gave up trying to prevent new arrivals from climbing the stairs. Extra police called were also helpless, especially when the followers of 'their Majesty and King' blew ganja smoke in the faces of these 'Babylons'.
When the plane with the Emperor landed, they leapt from the gallery to the tarmac, with not one being injured. They swarmed across the tarmac, sweeping aside the Jamaica Defence Force's Guard of Honour and scattering the officials who were lined on either side of a red carpet to greet the visitor.
IT WAS PANDEMONIUM
The waving gallery has hardly been used in recent years. At one time it was crammed with crowds of party faithfuls seeing off or welcoming the return home of the political leaders. The only crowds there have been to welcome Merlene Ottey and more recently, the Athens Olympians.
The airport is now going to be expanded and improved to meet the new standards demanded by security and other considerations. And so, the gallery will soon be a thing of the past. It will just be a faint memory among those who live with nostalgia.
Another link with our past which will be severed.
