MONTEGO BAY, St James — Despite a slight but persistent dip in air traffic growth in Jamaica since 2024, Airports Authority of Jamaica (AAJ) President and CEO Audley Deidrick is optimistic the country could see improvements this year.

While he acknowledged the downturn seen since the start of 2025 as a continuation of the slide, Deidrick pointed to positive signs.

“The slump in our aviation traffic continues into 2025 versus 2024 where the results for the year to date, May 2025, now show an overall decline of two per cent, driven by a six per cent decline in SIA (Sangster International Airport), but importantly and encouragingly, NMIA (Norman Manley International Airport) recorded growth of nine per cent year to date. Hence, a projection of 6.9 million passengers for 2025 is still being held and we expect that by 2028 we should be at 7.7 million passengers,” stated Deidrick.

He was speaking Wednesday during MBJ Airports Limited’s biannual airport forum held virtually on the Microsoft Teams platform. MBJ Airports operates Sangster International Airport in St James.

In presenting the data, the AAJ executive provided historical context, referencing an increase in traffic in 2023 as the country recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic that began to impact Jamaica in March 2020.

“Following the gradual and moderate recovery of Jamaica’s airport traffic in 2021 and 2022, post the COVID-19 pandemic, the year 2023 delivered a remarkable performance of recovery, with Jamaica posting total traffic for 2023 of seven million passengers versus 6.5 million passengers in 2019. That represents a recovery of seven per cent,” he noted.

“MBJ and SIA posted traffic of 5.27 million passengers in 2023, that grand year of recovery, versus 4.7 million passengers for 2019, which, for them, represented an 11 per cent increase above the 2019 traffic, while NMIA posted 1.7 million passengers in 2023 versus 1.8 million passengers in 2019,” stated Deidrick.

He said the expected growth trajectory failed to materialise and the numbers are now down five per cent when compared to 2019.

A closer look at the figures showed that MBJ, through SIA, had 5.1 million passengers in 2024 versus 5.27 million in 2023. Deidrick said this is an indication that the downturn seen in 2023 continued into 2024.

Operators of NMIA, PAC Kingston Airports Limited (PACKAL) saw 1.76 million passengers for 2024 versus 1.7 million for 2023. Deidrick said this represents a breakeven position of 1.5 per cent above the previous year.

“While this downturn can be attributed mainly to exogenous factors such as negative travel advisories, the United States of America elections — which is our major travel partner market — and equipment issues with aircraft availability challenges in the airline industry, we should also factor in the impact of Hurricane Beryl in 2024. So, all these factors in combination would have impacted what we saw in 2024 as a slight dampening of growth in traffic,” noted the AAJ president and CEO.

Among the anticipated avenues of growth is the country’s newest facility, Ian Fleming International Airport. It welcomed American Airlines in February 2024 as its first scheduled commercial carrier from the United States with twice weekly service as of December 2024. American has since increased its twice-weekly service to daily. Deidrick said this expansion of service is expected to continue based on demand being shown for this service.

Deidrick added that other air services into Ian Fleming are being pursued which is expected to significantly increase traffic going forward.