Interests for the destination keeps growing

Jamaica has been making a major pitch with a major airline partner; demand for the destination keeps growing. 

The pitch comes as Jamaica is moving quickly to protect one of the most important pieces of its tourism economy: the airline seats that bring travellers to the island. This comes amid rising fuel costs, higher fares and the loss of Spirit Airlines, reshaping the Caribbean aviation market, as the island accelerates its push for new connections from Latin America. 

Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett says the government is engaging major airline partners on airlift arrangements with carriers facing a more complicated operating environment shaped by volatile fuel prices, geopolitical uncertainty, pressure on yields and the recent shutdown of Spirit Airlines.

The discussions come at an important moment for Jamaica. Demand for the island remains strong, but the economics of flying to the Caribbean are changing — and Jamaica wants to make sure it stays near the top of airline route planners’ lists. “We’re going to have to move swiftly and well to secure our airlift arrangements in Jamaica,” Bartlett declared.

He is adamant that the immediate concern is not demand but capacity. Jamaica is now trying to get ahead of those changes rather than simply react to them.

Latin America diversification

The response also goes beyond protecting existing service. Jamaica is continuing a broader effort to diversify the markets from which its visitors arrive, with Latin America at the centre of that strategy. Copa Airlines is currently operating about 15 weekly flights into Jamaica, which the Tourism Minister contends is giving the island connectivity through Panama to a much larger network across Central and South America. 

The carrier has long been an important component of Jamaica’s effort to expand its South American visitor market. LATAM is another major piece. Its Lima-Montego Bay connection gives Jamaica access not only to Peru but to connecting traffic from markets including Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Bolivia.

LATAM previously expanded its nonstop Montego Bay service as Jamaica sought to deepen its reach across the continent. Wingo is now operating six weekly flights from Colombia, split between Bogotá and Medellín. Jamaica is also working with Avianca, another airline that has been expanding aggressively across the Americas, while Aeroméxico is expected to begin Jamaica service either in December or during the first quarter of 2027.

More diversified airlift map 

The result could be a significantly more diversified airlift map. In 2025, Caribbean Journal reported on Jamaica’s growing tourism traffic from Latin America, with Copa and LATAM together providing more than 10,000 monthly seats and new charter traffic expanding the island’s reach farther into South America.

Jamaica has outlined a goal of increasing Latin America’s share of its tourism market from roughly 2 per cent to 10 per cent by 2027, part of a wider effort to reduce reliance on its traditional source markets. That is increasingly significant in an aviation environment where an airline failure, fuel-price spike or capacity reduction in a major gateway can quickly affect an island destination.

Jamaica’s answer is to have more gateways, more carriers and more geographic diversity. Jamaica recorded an average airline load factor of 85 per cent between January and August 2026. 

Just under 1.9 million airline seats were available during that period, down 22 per cent compared with the same period last year, even as load factors increased by 3.8 percentage points. That combination makes maintaining and expanding capacity increasingly important.