Audley Boyd, Assistant Sport Editor

AIR JAMAICA is gearing up to offer same-day flight packages from Florida to Jamaica for preliminary games and from Jamaica to Barbados and St. Lucia for semi-final and final matches during next year's ICC WI Cricket World Cup (CWC).

The airline started the checking-out procedure recently by flying in some people from Florida for the Air Jamaica Cup one-day match between Jamaica and the United States at the stadium being constructed in Trelawny.

There are concerns that accommodation will not be enough for the projected number of visitors so Air Jamaica hopes that through its inventiveness it will be able to capitalise on this initiative.

Same-day flights

"We want to offer same-day flights from south Florida where you can fly down, watch the games and fly back if the hotels are full," explained Richard Lee, director of World Cup cricket special events - Air Jamaica. "We want to do it just for West Indies games; I think it can work."

All the West Indies' preliminary matches will be hosted in Jamaica with warm-up contests and the opening ceremony scheduled for Montego Bay's Jarrett Park and the Trelawny stadium and CWC games slated for Sabina Park in Kingston. Using references from the specifically-designed game recently, Lee pointed to the level of their testing at this point.

"We wanted to see the proximity to the stadium, to the airport, what time would our flights have to get in," he said.

"The other test that we wanted to do which we didn't get a chance to pull off was Kingston, Sabina. We'll look at the same things and also we are planning to do same-day flights from here to Barbados for the finals; and to St. Lucia for the semi-finals.

"So we really have to take a serious look to see how practical that is, for a man to come from Florida to watch a game in the stadium (Trelawny) or Sabina and fly back the same day."

What really appeared to have heartened the Air Jamaica official was the reaction of its major players - the passengers.

Fan response

"We wanted to see how responsive the West Indies fans would be because they were very quiet. Even though the West Indies are based in Jamaica for the first round, you would think that the North American West Indian fans would be jumping and getting ready to go to the World Cup.

"So we needed to get them excited and I think with what happened, we just wish the rain didn't affect it (the match) as much. But we think we were successful because we brought 50 fans with us," he said of the rain-affected match won by Jamaica against a U.S. XI.

"All of these players play in different clubs in North America, so when they go home now they are going to spread the word and say, 'Come man, (the) World Cup fever really has begun'."

Lee has been spreading the World Cup gospel along with officials from the Local Organising Committee and the Tourism Ministry and board in New York since last week. As a member of the task force for airlines, airports and seaports for the whole CWC 2007 next year, Lee says he also got a first-hand "look at customer service and movement of people".

He argued that despite the small size of the group, "... you had a team, you had spectators, you had media and you had officials. Take this experience and multiply it by 200 and what do you have? The World Cup!"