Starting today (February 23), the Donald Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay, St. James, will receive more flights out of American gateways from Frontier Airlines.

The American low-cost carrier is adding another three new non-stop routes from the United States from St. Louis, Chicago, and Denver, which is a significant boost for Jamaica from the mid-western and western United States. The new flights will all be launched this week starting with the St. Louis-Montego Bay service on Thursday (February 24) followed by the Denver-Montego Bay service on Friday and Chicago-Midway-to-Montego Bay on Saturday (February 25). 

According to Frontier Airlines, all the routes are operating three times per week. Jamaica is in the midst of what is likely to be a record-breaking winter tourist season and the country is showing no signs of slowing down. 

This year, Jamaica is expecting to outpace its record-breaking tourism numbers from 2019, buoyed by an all-time-high of seats to the island this winter. Local tourism officials are projecting more than $4.1 billion in tourism earnings, a number that would exceed last year’s revenues by 13.3 percent.

It is reported that Frontier Airlines has been the fastest-expanding airline in the Caribbean since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic with the ultra-low-cost carrier rapidly adding new flights across the region, mostly to high-volume tourism destinations like Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Cancun, Mexico.

This expansion has opened up a number of new source markets for Jamaica, including in a number of cities where nonstop flights to the Caribbean tend to be rare. This is a part of a wider trend that has seen United States-based airlines begin to look to new cities for Caribbean routes from the continued growth of Austin, Texas.