American Airlines leads US carriers flying to Jamaica with 28% market share
Published:Sunday | October 26, 2025 | 12:07 AMSteven Jackson - Senior Business Reporter
American Airlines led all US carriers in passenger volume to Jamaica during the first seven months of 2025, and did so with one of the lowest cancellation rates, according to United States federal data.
American flew over 811,580 passengers to Jamaica from January to July, more than any other US airline. That equated to 28 per cent of the 2.86 million passengers flying on US carriers to Jamaica, based on the Financial Gleaner’s analysis of the most recent data from US Department of Transportation.
The second-busiest carrier was JetBlue with some 738,000 passengers, followed by Delta at 475,000. Caribbean Airlines is not a US-registered carrier, so its performance was not included in the US data.
American, however, didn’t just move the most people — it did so reliably. Of 5,456 scheduled departures, only nine cancellations were noted, yielding a cancellation rate of just 0.17 per cent, or lower than Delta’s 0.20 per cent and United’s 0.23 per cent. The data on late arrivals was not available for international travel, only US domestic flights.
For travellers, however, the real pressure point was seat availability, with popular flights having shoulder-to-shoulder occupancy, or passenger load factor. Delta Airlines and United Airlines both operated with an average of 87 per cent of passenger load factor, American at 85 per cent, Southwest at 83 per cent, Jet Blue at 78 per cent, Frontier Airlines and Spirit Air both at 73 per cent, Envoy Air at 71 per cent, Sun County at 69 per cent, and Global Crossing at 25 per cent.
The busiest routes into Jamaica were not controlled by American. Delta’s route from Atlanta to MBJ delivered over 120,000 passengers, with multiple flights exceeding 90 per cent occupancy. MBJ is the code for the Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay.
American Airlines’ own routes were not far behind, with Charlette to MBJ with 105,000 passengers. JetBlue’s JFK route carried some 92,300 passengers to MBJ, while its flight to Kingston carried 82,500 passengers.
Earlier in the year, the Fort Lauderdale route overtook JFK in New York, for the first time, to become Kingston-based Norman Manley International Airport’s top destination.
Pacific Airport Group, the Mexican company that owns and operates Jamaica’s two largest airports under long-term concession agreements, said passenger traffic grew to 3.8 million for Montego Bay and 1.4 million for Kingston over nine months to September 2025. For Montego Bay, this represented a 1.3 per cent decline over the previous year and a 6.3 per cent climb for Kingston.