The Editor, Sir:

With all due respect to Ronald Brown's Sunday article, Jamaica cannot expect economic growth through national pride for its national airline alone. The fact of the matter is that Air Jamaica has continued to experience losses year after year, seemingly, no matter which recommendation is put forward or by which economic guru advised it. The fact of the matter is that the airline revenues cannot provide the turn around that it needs to pay off its debts and to sustain itself in the future.

Too many areas of need

There are too many areas of need in Jamaica to continue to inject funds into the airline year after year for reasons of national pride and hope for a breakthrough. The modernisation of our education sector needs to be our national priority, beginning with a total redevelopment of early childhood education curriculum, teacher training, infrastructure, access to technology, and an early exposure and training of our students to future national needs.

If you truly want to see Air Jamaica succeed, then the push for a regional airline would be a better idea where Jamaica would not have to focus all its limited resources on one development. We cannot be focusing on keeping failed industries alive when all our past and current efforts have failed. What we need to be doing now is figuring out a way to reduce our national debt, invest our meagre leftover budgetary allocation for capital expenditure into projects that project a safe ROI in the medium and long term and continue to provide the allocation to recurring expenditures that are becoming modernised, self-sustaining, effective in meeting their goals and managing for results priorities.

Ticket prices

The fact that whenever you compare the price of a ticket on Air Jamaica to that of most other known airlines, Air Jamaica continues to be the highest price suggests to me that the airline is struggling to maintain a minimal level of revenue that is required to barely stay afloat along with Government's regular subvention. This must not continue to be the norm. Air Jamaica has reached its end and now the nation must focus on getting back on its feet with investments that will allow it to pay teachers and essential service workers better by freeing up monies to truly invest in effective projects, one of which is education.

Let us do the right thing and throw out this worn tired dress!

I am, etc.,

DAMIAN WAITE

dwaite@umich.edu

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Via Go-Jamaica