NAME OF FEATURE | THE GLEANER | SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2024 11 AAJ 50TH ANNIVERSARY FEATURE 50 years of travel sustainability As President, how do you stay abreast of industry trends and developments to make well-informed decisions? I don’t want to overstate it by saying that it is pretty easy because you are operating in an environment that is globally coordinated and supported by several major worldwide organisations. You would be choosing to bury your head in the sand and not be in that loop of information and facilitation of these powerful organisations that run the powerful aviation industry across the globe. Can you share a successful strategic initiative led by you and your team? What were the key factors contributing to its success? As part of the whole move to privatising the airports there was a slate of regulatory and legal instruments created, under which the airports operated, and I would have been key in implementing and delivering these regulatory structures that further help to strengthen the operations of the airports, both financially and otherwise. We have moved from just being barely self-financing to being transformed into serious economic contributors. We are proud to know that part of our work is giving back to the people and Government of Jamaica. I led the privatisation of NMIA. To this day, the transaction for the privatisation of the NMIA is a world standard in terms of the level of returns that it provides to the Government of Jamaica for an airport of this size. It set a record. Can you provide details on the number of flights and passengers handled daily and can you differentiate between tourist and diaspora travellers in your data? Norman Manley has about 30 flights a day while Sangster is about 60 flights a day. NMIA processes about 5,000 passengers per day, while Sangster averages 15,000 passengers per day. Over 80% of our national aviation traffic is driven by tourism and the proportion of that is significantly different between the two airports as well. Over 95% of Sangster’s traffic is tourism driven, while Norman Manley sees about 40% tourism and 60% business and nationals, and diaspora traffic. How do you build and maintain relationships with key partners, donors, and other external stakeholders? It is sort of natural and automatic but should not be taken for granted.You have to know the drivers of the business of aviation: the airlines, the passengers, the concessionaires, the border control agencies, the government departments, plus the staff at the various bodies. Airports are probably one of the best examples of an ecosystem because it is a collection of individual moving parts and organisations all doing their individual functions, yet they have to work together cohesively to deliver a safe, secure and comfortable service in the aviation industry. So, when you take them all together, it is essential to coordinate all these stakeholders’ relationships as a central part of our operation.
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