Edmond Campbell, News Coordinator

An Air Jamaica plane on the tarmac of the Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston. - Ian Allen/Staff Photographer

AT LEAST one major international airline has expressed an interest in acquiring Jamaica's cash-strapped national airline.

Finance and the Public Service Minister Audley Shaw told The Gleaner this week that the Chinese national airline, Air China, has had initial talks with the Government with a view to operate Air Jamaica.

Prime Minister Bruce Golding, in his first radio call-in programme on January 30, told listeners that Air Jamaica was costing the country too much to maintain. He said the Government had plans to remove it from the national budget.

Air Jamaica has racked up significant losses, costing the country more than US$100 million (J$7 billion) to maintain annually.

"It is poor people's taxes we have to be using to maintain it and that cannot continue," Golding said on the programme.

The prime minister said he had instructed the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service to initiate talks with private interests that would be prepared to operate the airline.

120 destinations

Air China currently flies to about 120 destinations from its Beijing hub. The airline carried nearly four million passengers in 2006.

The airline made a profit of 2.7 billion yuan (US$385.1 million) in 2006 with an operating revenue of 44.9 billion yuan (US$6.4b).

Air China is the fourth-largest airline in Asia, the fifth largest in the world in terms of domestic cargo traffic.