Air Jamaica grounds flights FAA concerned about island's civil aviation oversight Monday, February 07, 2005 Source: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/html/20050206T230000-0500_74670_OBS_AIR_JAMAICA_GROUNDS_FLIGHTS.asp Air Jamaica has grounded up to a dozen of its daily flights to North America, a move which well-placed sources say is related to America's concerns about aspects of Jamaica's civil aviation oversight procedures and maintenance management controls at the Government-owned carrier. America's Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspected Jamaica in December and recently filed its report with the local authorities. Air Jamaica's top managers were unavailable for comment on the development yesterday, and a promised report on the cancellations by the company's public relations director, Sandrea Falconer, did not materialise. Booking agents claimed that the cancellations were because of soft passenger demand at this time. According to Observer sources, at least seven flights to Florida cities Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Orlando were cancelled yesterday. Flights to New York, Los Angeles and London were also cancelled yesterday and passengers who called the Air Jamaica reservation office were told that at least the Florida flights were showing up on the automated reservation system as being cancelled into today. "It is the low season," said a sales representative in explaining why both of the two daily flights from Kingston to Miami, as well as one of the three to Fort Lauderdale, were cancelled. Whatever the primary reason for the cancellations, Observer sources said it would have been exacerbated by a shortage of crew, with the recent decision by the owners to make redundant more than 100 flight attendants, which caused problems to schedules. "These cancellations have nothing to do with the restructuring of Air Jamaica and the cutting of routes under the new management," said a key source yesterday. "These are not the routes that are supposed to be on the chopping block." Air Jamaica's chief operating officer and route expert, John Lewis, as well as the chief pilot, Captain Lloyd Tai, were in Florida at the weekend attempting to find solutions to the issues and prevent any long-term harm to the airline. On Saturday, Robert Pickersgill, the minister with responsibility for aviation, confirmed that the FAA had in December conducted an audit of Jamaica's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and related agencies, including Air Jamaica. It was Jamaica's first substantial audit by the FAA in over six years. While he did not explicitly say so, Pickersgill suggested that the FAA inspectors had not demanded anything substantial from either the CAA or Air Jamaica to be in compliance with International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) standards which Jamaica follows. "There are things we need to do which we are in the process of doing," Pickersgill told the Observer. He, however, declined to be specific on what the Americans asked Jamaica to do to receive their unqualified imprimatur, but said these would take time to complete. "We have been given 90 days," he added. But Pickersgill stressed the safety of Air Jamaica was not at issue. "Let me give you an assurance that we will not do anything to minimise the safety of the equipment," he said. In 1994 the FAA, as part of its then new procedures for grading the civil aviation procedures of countries whose airlines want to fly to the United States, assessed Jamaica and found that it did not meet US standards. The island was placed in Category 2, which meant that while Air Jamaica could continue to fly to the United States, it had to keep to its existing fleet and could not open new routes. The restrictions were removed after more than two years, with the upgrading of the CAA and its oversight arrangements. Since then, the Americans, in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, have become even more stringent in their regulatory requirements. Pickersgill said on Saturday that there was "heightened surveillance (of Jamaica) because of the whole Air Jamaica situation" - an apparent reference to the Government retaking full ownership of the airline after the pull-out of Gordon "Butch" Stewart's Air Jamaica Acquisition Group.