The Editor, Sir:

The story is told of a man who had a fruit tree in his yard that had never flowered or borne fruit. He made plans to have it cut down, hiring a few men with chainsaws and having a truck ready to cart the debris away.

On the morning the workers turned up to do the job, they found the tree laden with blossoms. However, having gone to so much trouble to arrange the operation, the man had the tree cut down anyway.

I am wondering if the fact that the Government had expressed intentions, even before winning the election, to get rid of Air Jamaica, they might now be suffering from 'project myopia', which blinds them to any opportunities to revive the airline.

On another note, airlines are commercial entities, set up to conduct business in search of profits. If an airline sees 156,000 additional travellers headed for a destination (according to Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett), the automatic reaction would be to increase seats, not reduce or eliminate them. Could American Airlines' move be indicative of a slowdown in tourism (probably due to our unaddressed crime situation) that both Bartlett and the Government are afraid/ ashamed of admitting?

I am, etc.,

CLAUDE B. MANNING

godsondis@yahoo.com.