Jamaican Airline Restarts Flights to Canada

AIR Jamaica has resumed daily non-stop flights to Toronto, Canada, after a 14-year break, with high expectations that the action will be warmly welcomed by Canadian tourists and Jamaicans living in that country.

The airline´s chairman told the Jamaica Observer daily, that reports the news on Tuesday, the company has very high expectations and hopes to have two flights per day.

Air Jamaica´s return to Canada was marked with a full flight out of Kingston Monday. The passengers also included Prime Minister P J Patterson, whose itinerary includes a meeting with Canada´s Foreign Minister Bill Graham, as well as several other Jamaican top officials.

Air Jamaica has not flown to Canada since March 1990 when, under government ownership, it cut its loss-making service to Toronto and entered a code share agreement with Air Canada.

With Canada being one of Jamaica´s largest tourist markets and Toronto, a city of 4.7 million people, having large pockets of Jamaicans, the airline is hoping that a mix of tourists and ethnic travellers will prove a profitable combination, the company chairman highlighted.