Air Jamaica comes through!!!

We were headed to Bonaire with the gang from Adventure Scuba, located in Conshohocken, PA and after paying my way, realized that we were traveling on the dreaded AIR JAMAICA, an airline that I did not trust, not by reputation, but by prejudice. How could the flag airline of such a poor country, with such a limited infrastructure, be reliable or even safe? Boy was I nervous. I had images of the cockpit full of dreadlocked Rastafarian fighter pilots smoking spleefs, and doing loop-de-loops and drag-racing their hundred million dollar Airbuses. And that was just on the runway.

The flight down to Bonaire was problem free, and the stay at Buddy Dive was wonderful. It was on the way home that the problems started. We checked the weather on the Internet prior to departure. It seems a 'bad-assed blizzard from hell' was working it's way up and down the east coast and our connection back in to Philly from Kingston would definitely be questionable.

Still, Air Jamaica Mon, took off on the first leg with hearty, "No worries, Mon." Being a flock of mostly neurotic Northeasterners, we did plenty of "worries, Mon" and low and behold, as we were approaching Jamaica we were informed that our connecting flight home was cancelled, due to weather.

If you happened to be on a container ship anywhere in the Caribbean at the time of that announcement you could have looked up towards a speck moving across the sky and wondered what that agonized groan was that was coming from the heavens. Had all of the frustrations of every Philly sports fan of the last 100 years collected into a living, whining entity? Was it a badly constipated choir of angels? Nope, it was about 200 dive travelers realizing that they would now be stuck in the Kingston Airport until the east coast recovered from the storm.

There were a lot of experienced travellers on board and we never expected what happened next. Immediately there was an announcement: We were to be put up at an all-inclusive resort, on the ocean, with the stay, food and drinks, all provided for free and flown back to Philadelphia the next day, at no cost.

If this had happened with any US flagged carrier, make that any other carrier I could think of, we all would have been left to sleep in the airport and maybe given a food voucher. If it was US Air, I could imagine that they would have a Customer Torture Representative deliver a hearty slap to each passenger as the de-planed.

But this was Air Jamaica, who I would fly again any day. And then even they apologized for our inconvenience. Bravo!