John Lynch is right - except, perhaps, in the more exceptional and extreme of circumstance.

We can't expect our tourists to swim to Jamaica. Neither do we expect them to come by boat; certainly not the stopover variety who find accommodation in hotels. So, as the chairman of the Jamaica Tourist Board says, they come by aeroplane. And, according to Mr Lynch, all things being equal, the more hotel rooms you have, the more airline seats you need to transport the visitors to fill them.

Mr Lynch, of course, knows more than a thing or two about these matters. He is a highly placed executive in the Sandals/Beaches hotel chain and its marketing arm, Unique Vacations. He also served at one time on the board of Air Jamaica.

To put it bluntly, John Lynch knows the tourism business. That is why we believe Lynch when he says Jamaica needs more airlift to fill the explosion of hotel rooms of recent years in the wake of the so-called 'Spanish invasion', that is, the development of tourism properties by Spanish firms. The construction continues.

Given Mr Lynch's analysis, we find it difficult to understand or appreciate the logic of the Government's decision to deny a licence to Airone Ventures, an airline company set up by Irish investors, to operate in Jamaica.

Airone, based in Jamaica, would be a low-cost carrier, flying initially between the United States cities, Jamaica, Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, and Antigua and Barbuda. It would, over time, expand its route structure.

According to Don Wehby, the minister who has portfolio responsibility for the state-owned Air Jamaica, the rejection of Airone's application has something to do with the Government's intention to divest its loss-making carrier.

The Government's position, it seems, is that it would lose negotiating leverage in any sale of Air Jamaica if another Jamaican-owned airline was in operation at the time of the divestment. The inescapable logic, therefore, is that the Government intends to create, in so far as possible, a kind of national airline monopoly for Air Jamaica - except that this is not quite possible, given the foreign carriers already competing with the national carrier on international routes. This underlying position is extraordinary, coming, as it does, from someone who recently transited to Government from the private sector and who believes in the free market and competition.

The Government also had another context from which it might have reviewed the Air One application: Over the past decade, Air Jamaica has lost over US$1 billion, which has become the burden of the Jamaican taxpayer. For most of that time, the Government was the ostensible minority partner in Jamaica, as it proposes to be again in the new divestment plan. Taxpayers, under this model, will be responsible for a proportion of losses, should there be any, incurred by the company after divestment.

Airone was supposed to be a totally private venture. The investors were risking their cash and not asking Jamaican taxpayers for a penny. Our Government felt it better to protect them from risking their capital on the assumption that it is creating a better environment for the sale of Air Jamaica. What it is actually doing is creating a framework for continued inefficiency for the national carrier.

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