Caymanians and longer-term residents of these Islands will remember vividly the magnificent and magnanimous performance by Cayman Airways and its staff in providing exemplary service in next-to-impossible circumstances prior to and immediately after the landfall of Hurricane Ivan in September 2004.

Equally, the national airline has once again gone above and beyond the call of duty in providing free transportation for passengers and cargo to Cayman Brac and Little Cayman as part of the preparation for and the ongoing recovery and rebuilding efforts following the impact of Hurricane Paloma on the Sister Islands.

Contrast the airline’s stellar performance in 2004 and once again in 2008 with the controversy that erupted during and after the brush with Hurricane Dean last year.

Fortunately, the storm itself proved to be very much a non-event for the Cayman Islands but that narrow escape was impossible to predict in the days and hours leading up to its projected approach.

During that period, Cayman Airways came in for some considerable criticism for what was seen as a grave inability to organise the departure of the many thousands of tourists and residents wanting to leave Grand Cayman prior to the storm.

In addition to the airline’s apparent inability to deal with the handling of sheer passenger numbers, the further claimed inability to override astronomically high, computer-generated short-notice, one-way fares also caused a lot of ill-feeling on the part of those who were effectively held to ransom by the airline.

The subsequent “own motion” investigation by the Complaints Commissioner only served to highlight that this was a problem that should never have occurred in the first place.

Furthermore, we were astonished at the time that residents and visitors of Little Cayman were required to pay $25 for the privilege of complying with a government-ordered mandatory evacuation order. Those that could not afford it were not to be refused passage but, as we commented then, how much more embarrassingly parsimonious could we get in the eyes of the world?

What then might have been responsible for the dramatic difference in the approach taken in 2007 compared to that in 2004 and then later in 2008? One factor that could be relevant is that in 2004 and 2008 the airline was run by Caymanians instead of imported “experts” from other countries, who doubtless had no understanding or appreciation of what needs to be done in times of emergencies.

Yes, the airline’s financial state of affairs is always important but the “bottom line” must sometimes be disregarded in extreme circumstances, even though, under the immediate past management, the pretence of operating on a “private sector” basis seemed to be no more than a convenient excuse when they needed it.

But, once again, the imminent approach and impact of a hurricane serves to reinforce the widely-held belief that the Cayman Islands must have a national airline on which it can count at such times – assuming the airline performs appropriately, that is.

For more years than we care to remember there has been an ongoing debate about the wisdom of maintaining a national airline in the first place, with the critics understandably pointing to the large sums of money it has taken to keep it operational.

If the worse comes to the worst, the argument goes, and we are abandoned by the foreign airlines, we can always ‘wet lease’ the necessary aircraft at short notice to provide immediate airlift to the Islands.

This, of course, disregards the obvious benefits of having an airline with our own prominent national identity and promotional infrastructure, instead of being obscured as a relatively minor dot on the route map of the major carriers.

One wonders what would have become of Cayman’s now enviable success story had we not had the foresight to incorporate our own national air-carrier following the pull-out of BWIA which provided direct flights form Miami.

Indeed, following Hurricane Ivan especially, the US airlines were all but invisible. If we had no airline of our own to start with, which government department, or even private enterprise, in the hours and days following the impact of a major hurricane would have the time and resources to set up a fully-fledged airlift operation from scratch, in time to make any meaningful difference to the pressing situation that would then exist?

Further, closing Cayman Airways would not remove the annual subsidy for airlift to the Cayman Islands because we would simply end up paying that subsidy to the foreign carriers. Other Caribbean countries that do not have national flag carriers, all pay subsidies to the foreign carriers.

Indeed, our neighbour Jamaica, which does have its own national airline, still ended up paying a substantial sum to American Airlines just recently in order to maintain guaranteed airlift to the island.

Therefore, at the same time as cementing the notion that we need to keep Cayman Airways, Hurricane Paloma may also have served to highlight the importance of having our airline actually run by Caymanians.