Like most Jamaicans who wish this country well, we winced on seeing the videos showing passenger gridlock inside the immigration hall at Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay a few weeks ago.

Travellers, we are told, suffered wait times of up to three hours to clear the airport. That was not a good look for Jamaica. Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of the travel industry will tell you that airports provide travellers with the first and last impressions of a destination.

A bad airport experience will not only infuriate local travellers, it can upend all the efforts made by travel agents, tour operators, hoteliers, operators of villas and attractions, and other tourism industry players to woo visitors to this wonderful country. And if visitors, in particular, start sharing that bad experience by word of mouth or — as was the case a few weeks ago — via social media, it makes it more difficult to promote Jamaica as a destination worth visiting.

It is therefore important that the Government, its agencies, and the operators of the island’s international airports, ensure that the recent fiasco at Sangster International is not repeated.

But this goes beyond tourism, as airports are vital to a country’s economic development.

Let’s consider employment, for example. An Air Transport Action Group report, based on 2004 figures and estimations, told us that globally the airline and airport industry directly employs 4.3 million people. That figure, we expect, is higher now, given industry expansion even when one considers job reductions during the period when COVID-19 affected world travel.

Here in Jamaica the only airport employment figures we were able to ascertain up to press time yesterday was an estimate of 7,000 at Sangster International.

We recall, however, that in July last year close to 1,000 jobseekers answered an invitation by MBJ Airports Limited, operators of Sangster International, to fill hundreds of positions which had been vacant since the airport reopened amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Given the impressive recovery of Jamaica’s tourism industry from the effects of the pandemic — more than three million stopover arrivals in 2022 and over US$3.7 billion in earnings — we should not, at this point, be scrambling to upgrade our airports.

However, we are here, and according to the Government, the US$70-million runway expansion project at Sangster is being complemented with a range of supporting infrastructure because the facility is outdated and well below what is required for efficient operation.

It is important that the upgrade is properly done and priority be given to its completion with strict monitoring and audit to prevent misuse or theft of taxpayers’ money.

We expect, as well, that technology designed to improve movement through Sangster will be introduced to the other airports, given growth in passenger traffic.

Ensuring high-quality passenger experience is vital to airport revenue increases, which will redound to the benefit of the country’s economy and reputation. Long queues and inadequate facilities are counter to those objectives.

Our efforts, though, should not stop with the current upgrade if we regard our airports as more than facilities for travellers to get flights, access duty-free shopping, or conduct intransit business meetings.