TOURISM Minister Edmund Bartlett says Jamaica could lose some of its ‘top end’ visitors because of Virgin Atlantic Airways’ decision to fly to Kingston from London’s Gatwick Airport instead of Heathrow, where most of these guests opt to travel through.

“The Heathrow connection is critical to us because it brings the top end visitors and some of our properties like Round Hill and Half Moon, among others, rely on the traffic out of Heathrow for their particular clients,” Bartlett told the Observer yesterday.

“The top end crowd don’t use Gatwick so it will definitely start affecting us until we can sort it out,” he said.

The minister said he was further distressed by the fact that the Heathrow slot would be used to transport clients to Barbados, which could put a further dent into Jamaica’s tourism sector.

However, Virgin which is expected to make its inaugural flight to Kingston today, defended its decision to service Kingston from Gatwick, saying that travellers arriving at this airport would be able to use some of the best rail services in Britain, which run every few minutes into the heart of London and more frequently than services from Heathrow.

Paul Charles, Virgin’s director of communications, told the Observer yesterday that the first flight from Gatwick into Kingston, which is scheduled to arrive around 2:30 pm will be full, with some 450 persons on board the Boeing 747 aircraft.

Charles said the airline’s owner, Sir Richard Branson, will be in Kingston to meet the flight.

Bartlett has, however, maintained that the tourism sector would no doubt “be challenged by the absence of a direct flight out of Heathrow”.

“I personally felt a little embarrassed at the Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO) last week when my counterpart from Barbados gleefully announced to me that they (Virgin) will be coming there using their slots,” the minister said.

Bartlett said based on these concerns, Jamaica Vacations (JAMVAC), is going to be very important in trying to get seats for Jamaica out of Heathrow in order to make up for this deficiency.

JAMVAC, Bartlett explained, is a company established primarily to provide seat support for charters and airlines to ensure that the spaces are available to bring visitors into the country.

“They have a key role to play now in assisting us to get the traffic into Jamaica out of Europe,” he said.

“As we go into Europe, and I will be going there next week to drum up support in that market, we need airlifts. As the saying goes ‘people don’t swim to Jamaica’ and therefore, we have to have the means by which they get here,” he added.

In May, Air Jamaica announced that it would discontinue its service to London, effective October 28, and enter into a code-share agreement with Virgin Atlantic under which the Air Jamaica code would be placed on all Virgin Atlantic flights between Jamaica and London Gatwick.

The sale of the national carrier’s lucrative landing and gate slots at Heathrow International Airport in London to Virgin Atlantic also formed part of the deal which sparked controversy.

On June 1 of this year, then finance minister, Dr Omar Davies, announced that Jamaica had earned £5.1 million (US$10.2 million) from the sale, but said that the deal was still being negotiated.

Davies said that Air Jamaica lost US$27 million on the London route in 2006, and that projections were that the figure would have exceeded US$30 million in 2007.