When Its Good, it's Very Very Good - When it's Bad it's Horrid
"No problem, mon" is Jamaica's unofficial slogan. Seems that nobody bothered to tell their national carrier, Air Jamaica. You really kinda know when you book Air Jamaica to Bonaire that it is indeed possible that things are not going to go quite right. In the "olden days" AJ would indeed hold flights for later connections coming in from the US to Montego Bay so that they could catch their Bonaire connections. But apparently, that doesn't work the same way anymore. Our friends were stranded the last time they tried that connection, and had to go back to Miami to catch another flight to Bonaire, as AJ flies to Bonaire only once a week these days.
Our connection down here was flawless. They held the Bonaire flight the few minutes it would take to get us on board before we winged off to Bonaire, arriving a few minutes early. Poetry in motion even. We got there early enough to purchase our upgrades, and all was perfect. On our way home, however, things immediately started looking not so wonderful when we found that the island's Internet service was basically not working, then we found that even worse, all of AJ's computers across the Caribbean were out of service. This made it necessary for the poor contractors behind the counter to have to hand write everything including boarding passes. So they decided they were not going to let us buy upgrades, and otherwise caused mass annoyance as we were not allowed into the air conditioned departure lounge until we had real boarding passes, which couldn't be provided until they called Montego Bay and then got what seats were available and blah blah blah. When we finally got into the air conditioning, things were much better, albeit crowded. Our flight was scheduled to board at 2, take off at 3. It is now 3:05 and the inbound has not yet arrived, and nobody seems to have any word on whether it is going to, so there you have it.
So why do we fly Air Jamaica with its spotty service? Because our alternatives are not fantastic. AJ goes BWI to Mobay to Bonaire. We CAN take American, which would go Dulles to Puerto Rico, 9 hour layover, then Eagle to Bonaire, arriving in the evening. Departure back to the US is at some ungodly hour like 6 am, with another 9 hour layover in Puerto Rico. The Dash 8s that Eagle flies are literally painful because the seat pitch is rather crappy. They are also rather expensive, Puerto Rico is really horrible, and 9 hours is a very long time. Other options are Dulles to Newark, Newark to Bonaire on Continental, with an arrival sometime around 4:30 AM. We don't know what the flight back is like. They also have an overnight flight from Houston. Not sure about the layovers, or the connectivity time, but I'm told that the seat pitch of the Continental Jets is not much better than the Eagle Dash 8, and the cabin service apparently is horrible.
As I look up here at 10 past 3, KLM has landed another MD11 and has offload ALL of its passengers into the tiny departure lounge It's starting to get pretty hot and stuffy. Wonder when any updates will come.