REDJET, the Barbados-based privately-owned airline whose spokesmen were quick to accuse both Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago earlier in the year of ‘politicking’ in the approval of operational licences — a claim firmly and officially refuted — has now announced that it would be ready to inaugurate flights on the Jamaica-Trinidad route from November 20. But that would be some four months after REDjet was given the official nod by both Jamaica and T&T to begin flying. The reality is that having launched ticketing arrangements in April for flights by its two aircraft for the limited Barbados-Guyana route, the carrier has often had to announce cancellations of scheduled services due to technical and other problems.
However, it has remained quite vigorous in marketing itself as a low-cost carrier, with its public relations handlers seeking to make comparison with fares and services offered by the regional airline, LIAT, as well as State-owned Caribbean Airlines Ltd (CAL) with which Air Jamaica has merged.
CAL, for its part, has already started to demonstrate its own aggressive marketing strategies to show competitiveness in overall cost and reliability in scheduled services. Well, for a start, CAL, unlike LIAT, benefits from subsidized aviation fuel, which is a major challenge in operational costs for airlines.
When it comes to seeking and obtaining favourable publicity, particularly in the Barbados media, even the detractors of REDJet would concede that it has been doing quite a remarkable job.
Assurances of less frustration and costly inconveniencies for stranded passengers on the Barbados/Guyana route — as well about plans to acquire more aircraft to supplement its current two — have been repeatedly expressed via the media.
More recently, as if to raise further expectations, the airline’s public relations arm has been busy getting chairman, Ian Burns to disclose how its  ‘stakeholders’ (precisely who are they?) had come to the ‘rescue’ for the purchase of a third aircraft, with possibly two more between December this year and during 2012.
Further, that flights will shortly begin also on a new Guyana-Antigua route. The latter announcement is quite surprising for two reasons: First, Antigua and Barbuda has long been the hub for regional airline, LIAT, and its workers would understandably be concerned about the implications of such a development with REDJet.
Secondly, and relatedly, it was the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Baldwin Spencer, who had recently gone public with his appeal for other governments of the region to help share the responsibility for LIAT to meet its financial challenges by extending some of the subsidies they often readily offer to facilitate business with foreign-owned airlines.

Questioning time
Now, therefore, that REDjet’s chairman, Ian Burns has been stirring expectations for flight arrangements on six new routes, including destinations like Panama, Jamaica and St. Martin, while also pointing to claimed “profits earned by the airline,” perhaps the time has come—it’s overdue really—for the company’s public relations handlers to help inform the public here, and elsewhere in the region, with some basic information:
For instance, who are the ‘owners’ of REDjet; the source (s) of funding, including the US$3 million recently announced for expansion of the airline’s fleet of aircraft; and also some precise data on claimed profits earned.
Had REDjet been a State-owned or public entity, there would have been much demand, and rightly so, for basic information about its decision-makers; its funding operations; relations with unionised workers; and profits made or losses incurred. Not forgetting, of course, the absolute need to avoid frequent stranding and inconvenience of passengers.
We are, after all, accustomed to getting a flow of basic and relevant information from LIAT as well as Caribbean Airlines Ltd. This was also the case with ‘Air Jamaica’. Why, then, the lack of questioning on the ownership, funding sources, and management operations of REDjet?
Truth is, that for all the publicity being earned by REDjet (without purchase of advertisements), there remain lingering concerns about the circumstances surrounding the launch of this airline with its heavy emphasis as a ‘low-cost’ carrier, but with comparatively little information in relation to ownership, management, and capacity to deliver the quality and reliability of services so easily spoken about in public relations endeavours via the media.
It is also high time for ALL the shareholders of LIAT to let the public know where they stand on the need to broaden the base of support for this regional airline, and why the discrimination in offering of subsidies to airlines.
CARICOM leaders have an obligation to ensure that airlines, local or foreign-owned, that operate in our airspace provide the reliable and quality service to the public for which they sought and obtained licences and facilities.
A sad reality today, with CARICOM in its 38th year of existence, is that while the region’s political directorate remains good on talk about the imperatives of our economic integration and unity as a people, they are yet to come forward with new initiatives on regional air and sea transportation—the means by which there can be guaranteed and, hopefully, less costly intra-regional movement of people and goods.