According to a Government Information Agency (GINA) release, the decision was due to several reasons, the first being that Universal Airlines is offering a one-stop flight to Havana, Cuba today, Friday, September 20.

It quoted, Permanent Secretary in the Office of the President Ms. Jennifer Webster as saying that while they were in negotiations with British West Indian Airlines (BWIA), Universal Airlines came up with a better offer, which will cost the Government less than what they would have had to pay if they were using the BWIA charter.

“A commitment was made to BWIA to transport those students, but BWIA’s offer would have been to transport them on the 19th September from Georgetown to Kingston, Jamaica. This would have meant that we would have had no alternative but to have another chartered arrangement to take them from Kingston, Jamaica to Cuba,” Ms Webster said.

The two charters quoted by BWIA and Air Jamaica, Webster said, would have cost the Government some US$9,000 more than the one-stop flight to Cuba with Universal.

“Because we were unsure whether all the processing of visas and so would have been done in a timely manner, we thought that it would have been better to transport these students by a charter than to make bookings,” Ms Webster noted.

Moreover, because of the large number of students travelling, most of whom will be doing so for the first time, the Office of the President thought it would have been irresponsible to fly the students in transit at other airports, especially since BWIA was not assisting in coordinating the other leg of the transportation, she added.