“Flying the Caribbean and the rest of the world with Fly Jamaica Airlines!”

Sep 29, 2013 Sports

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Colin E. H. Croft
Please pardon the digression, and personal references here, but this weekend, in Guyana, something absolutely phenomenally special that has been very long in coming, finally manifests itself.
‘Fly Jamaica Airline’, that absolutely needed regional cum international airline, after overcoming a gazillion roadblocks, makes its debut, with flights to and from New York City, via Kingston, Jamaica, to Cheddi Jagan International Airport in Guyana.  Present and ex-patriot Guyanese should be ecstatic!

There is no one more proud than me, as I have had direct contact with some of the major players here, rubbing shoulders with them long before any of this was even a thought in anyone’s mind.
Captain Lloyd Tai, the Jamaican connection in FJA, a veteran of Air Jamaica, is a cricket fan, and has always been vocal, and encouraging, when it came to West Indies cricket.  He is quite an aviation pioneer too.
Like, for me, unbelievably, playing cricket for West Indies 1976/77 to 1982, this reality that is ‘Fly Jamaica Airline’ was the vivid dream of another visionary – Captain Paul Ronald Reece – also a student at Central High School when I attended 1966 to 1971.  We were good friends, always exchanging aviation hopes.
With many travel and logistic problems publicly aired by management of Limacol Caribbean Premier League after the initial tournament was over, many hunger for a day when this new venture might come to compete with already established Caribbean Airlines (CA) and Leeward Island Air Transport (LIAT).
That will not be easy.
Aviation is like a hydra.  It has many heads and manifestations; variations galore.  Even if one works well, there is no certainty that the whole will also exist efficiently or profitably.
Even massive airlines, like my favorite US airline, Delta Airlines, who itself only emerged from bankruptcy in 2007, reinventing itself, combining with Northwest Airlines, to be the juggernaut that it now is, and whose employees bought its first Boeing 767 – “The Spirit of Delta” – in 1982, have had to desist from flying to Guyana, due to supposed – so Delta suggests – outside, unfair, perhaps political, interference.
CA and LIAT have served Guyana and the Caribbean relatively well, if sometimes unreliable.  FJA will hope to get some of that massively lucrative market – Guyanese supply at least one-third of CA’s income – that are flights between Guyana and New York, and between Guyana and Toronto.  We shall see!
Most who knows me know that I have been involved in aviation for many years.  I was an Assistant Air Traffic Control Officer from 1973 to 1981, before migrating from Guyana.
I spent many early mornings on Runway 05/23 (now 06/24), actually outrunning dogs and snakes, to be fit enough to play cricket well.
That is nothing like the determination of Ronald Reece.
Like a few of us, he too got a Commercial Pilot’s License.  When he heard that then Guyana Airways might be hiring, he paid his own hard earned money to get his Boeing 757 ratings; expensive; hoping for a job.
Now, for FJA’s B-757, he certainly will need them.  This guy is a die-hard aviator!
I have done Flight Dispatching and Customer Service Management, and with engineering school and additional continuous, always on-going training, after I stopped playing for West Indies, I worked for United Technologies/Pratt & Whitney, one of the world’s premier airplane engine builders.  I even had input into Pratt’s PW-4000 engine, and others, which power, still, some of the world’s largest airplanes.
Obviously, I love aviation.  Reece, who also played cricket with us at CHS, ate, drank and imagined aviation!
Things did not go well for Guyana Airways.  Had it continued, GA could have been well established now.  Eventually defunct, it did leave Reece and others that I know well too, relatively well qualified.
Captain on Fly Jamaica Airlines’ first flight from New York to Guyana this weekend is Neil “Butch” Savory.  I consider him one of my best friends.  Another veteran pilot, Jimmy Harewood, makes up that triangle.
Butch is also a product of Central HS, and Queens College, and a past ATCO too, who even taught me to drive, while I played for West Indies.  He supported me much.  His parents and home were also mine.
We may have gone our diverse ways in life, marriages and children etc., but the friendships remain strong!
So, what should the Caribbean expect from Fly Jamaica Airline, especially as it reflects around our only integrated international sport – cricket?
That is an important question, especially with LCPL in vogue.
Many returning Caribbean diaspora still live in NYC and Toronto.  Supposedly suffering Guyanese have wished, hoped, even prayed, for another air carrier to be competition for Caribbean Airlines.
They have their wish.  How the symbiosis of these entities operates will be intriguing!
But the returning diaspora, with disposable income after many years of very hard toil “up north”, are also cricket fans who will be longing to see LCPL and other West Indies Cricket Board sanctioned events, tours and tournaments, when held in the Caribbean.  FJA can be instrumental for them here.
Yes, this weekend’s aviation activities in Guyana are quite exciting and unique!  Enjoy!

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