As Jamaica prepares for an uptick in hotel rooms over the next five years and an increase in airlifts from new tourism source markets, the Government of Jamaica is pressing ahead with plans to improve the country’s airport capacity to facilitate a smoother visitor experience.

President and Chief Executive Officer of the Airports Authority of Jamaica (AAJ), Audley Diedrick, revealed that the Government has appointed an enterprise team to plan for a new terminal at the Sangster International Airport (SIA) in Montego Bay. At the same time, the AAJ is assessing the feasibility of an international airport in Westmoreland.

Diedrick made the disclosure in a panel discussion titled Seats and Strategies, as moderator Donovan White explored ways to increase airlift to Jamaica.

“So the traffic forecast that we are working with for Sangster International Airport, it suggests that the current facility, even with the expansions that are taking place there now, will only be sufficient to take that present facility up to 2034,” Diedrick shared.

“When you look at the longer-term traffic forecast for 2034 to 2054, that 20-year traffic forecast will call for that airport to be able to accommodate 15 million passengers, as against the five million that it is now accommodating. In fact, the 2034 forecast with the current expansion will take it up to 7 million passengers,” he continued.

With these projections, the AAJ president said now is the best time to commence master planning and business development activities for a new terminal. Execution of those plans is, however, contingent on the Government’s plans to extend its 30-year concession agreement with Grupo Aeropuerto del Pacifico (GAP), which manages SIA through its subsidiary MBJ Airports Limited.

That concession agreement will come to a close in 2034, at which time the Government of that day can choose to tender a new request for proposal or renegotiate the terms of the current arrangement with GAP.

“Those decisions are now the subject of what this enterprise team is tasked to undertake,” Diedrick told Our Today.

In terms of the timeline for completing the current terminal expansion phase at SIA, he said projections indicate between the end of 2026 and the start of 2027. The process involves extending the immigration hall, increasing the square footage of the security hall, and additions to ground transportation areas.

Still, Diedrick reiterated that the expansionary works now underway will only facilitate projected passenger traffic at the airport up to 2034.

Director of Tourism Donovan White shared in his update on the state of Jamaica’s tourism, during the JAPEX 2025 opening ceremony, that an additional 11,000 hotel rooms should be constructed by 2030, bringing Jamaica’s room stock to between 45,000 and 46,000.

With this in mind, Diedrick stressed that another phase of terminal expansion will need to begin before 2034.

“It may not be finished by 2034, but it must be in some advanced stage of development and implementation,” he shared, confirming that the projections of passenger arrivals are based on the number of additional hotel rooms in the pipeline for construction.

“Our aviation and airport traffic is underpinned more directly by tourism projections and tourism growth than anything else. Tourism traffic represents over 80 per cent of our airport’s traffic. In the case of Sangster, that figure is over 95 per cent. So whatever projections that the tourism authorities make for room stock growth and tourism growth, those are the kind of projections we have to make for our airport expansion and traffic growth,” Diedrick further explained to Our Today.

A new airport for Westmoreland

To support the increase in overnight visitor arrivals, the AAJ has identified lands in Little London, Westmoreland, to construct an international airport that will reduce traffic in Montego Bay and service the Negril tourism corridor and as far as Treasure Beach in St Elizabeth.

“As mentioned earlier, there are serious challenges with the distance from Sangster and the conditions of the road network and, yes, even though the Government could address that in terms of building new road infrastructure… the fact is, having an airport in close proximity to your tourism destination is the ideal fit for tourism airport development,” Diedrick told Our Today.

“Because you’re also speaking about it servicing the south coast, mainly Treasure Beach. So it’s serving not just Negril; it’s serving Hanover, Westmoreland and parts of St Elizabeth,” he outlined further.

Diedrick pointed out that the current location of the Negril Aerodrome is unsuitable for expansion and development into an international facility, given that it is situated near swamplands, and so Little London was the preferred option.

When asked about the capacity of that airport, the AAJ head said, “It’s an airport that will be able to cater to probably two to three million passengers, but the projection initially is that over the next 10 years passengers could grow as much as one million.

“We’re building a Code C facility there. It will be built in an incremental way, so you won’t build it from day one to accommodate three million passengers. But based on the forecast designs and so on, it will be a Code C airport and can even move up to a code E airport,” he continued.

Clarifying the difference between a Code C and Code E airports, Diedrick noted that type C airports can accommodate 737 and 747 carriers, while Code E facilities can host “wide-body aircraft that do transcontinental flights like from the UK and distant places”.

‘Ian Fleming as a small boutique airport’

Responding to a question on plans for the Ian Fleming International Airport, Diedrick said in the short-term the AAJ will be “working with Ian Fleming as a small boutique airport with a shorter runway that can only take a certain size aircraft” and maximise the facility’s capacity to land smaller aircraft.

However, he noted that with some passenger traffic coming from American Airlines into the Boscobel, St Mary-based airport, plans are in the pipeline to expand the aprons of the facility to ground additional carriers simultaneously.

“The nature of airport development is that you build and expand incrementally to provide for the traffic growth that you are receiving, and so there will be further expansion of Ian Fleming once the demand is showing that traffic is going to be growing. But the demand is more than likely there because, of course, there’s Ocho Rios, there’s the improvement of the tourism product in St. Mary and Portland as well,” Diedrick stated.

Still, he noted that for now, the airports in Kingston and Montego will have a higher demand for airlift based on capacity and, by extension, lower price points.