General Secretary of Antigua & Barbuda Workers Union (ABWU) David Massiah said the matter was referred to the prime minister and the tourism minister Tuesday, hours after AA notified the union of its decision.

“It was more than a big disrespect to the union and the workers in particular because the workers were not aware, and all of a sudden you have people who have worked here 25 years and more with the company and to hear that they don’t have a job as of the 1st of November is more than traumatic in some ways,” he said.

The company, Massiah explained, has not yet indicated how many workers will be sent home.

Union representatives met with AA employees later in the day to notify them of the situation and decide on their next court of action.

Minister of Tourism John Maginley indicated that government has limited options.

“I don’t know what steps we can take at this time,” he stated.

“I understand that they have already outsourced a number of Caribbean destinations. Apparently, this is part of their cost-cutting exercise.”

The planned retrenchment comes as AA prepares to introduce on November 17, four weekly direct flights from John F Kennedy International Airport in New York to Antigua under a revenue guarantee arrangement with the government.

Minister Maginley said that deal has not been affected.

“Nothing will happen anytime in the near future,” he disclosed basing his argument on recent discussions with AA.

“These big corporations, when they file for bankruptcy, there’s a long procedure and we don’t expect it to affect the flights into Antigua,” the minister added.

AA has not made an official statement on the matter.

American slapped its name on the arenas of both teams playing in the NBA finals back when stadium naming rights were a hot commodity _ the AmericanAirlines Arena in Miami and the American Airlines Center in Dallas.

So whether the Miami Heat or the Dallas Mavericks win the title, American figures to get a lot of TV time. The same thing happened in 2006, when the Heat defeated the Mavericks in six games.

American bought the naming rights to those arenas a decade ago. According to published reports at the time, which American wouldn’t confirm or deny, it agreed to pay $195 million over 30 years for the Dallas rights and $42 million over 20 years in Miami.

Stadium-naming rights were trendy then, and they reached a fever pitch in 2006 when Citigroup agreed to pay $20 million a year to christen the New York Mets’ new baseball home Citi Field when it opened a couple of years ago. But sports sponsorships became harder to sell during the recession, and the business hasn’t fully recovered.

The Texas Rangers baseball team hasn’t found a name sponsor since ending a deal with mortgage lender Ameriquest in 2007. Today, it’s still simply Rangers Ballpark in Arlington.

New football stadiums in Dallas and outside New York still don’t have sponsorships. Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones might have missed his best chance when his new stadium hosted the Super Bowl in February. Now, with an NFL lockout dragging on, there’s a chance of missing games this fall.

Recent deals have been underwhelming. Miami did a 1-year deal to rename the home of the NFL Dolphins Land Shark Stadium after a beer promoted by singer Jimmy Buffett, then it cut a 5-year agreement with a Canadian company. It’s now Sun Life Stadium.

In Jacksonville, Fla., the football stadium had no corporate name for two years after a deal ended with Alltel, a phone company acquired by Verizon. Finally, a local bank ponied up for EverBank Field.

Andrew Zimbalist, a sports economist at Smith College, said the financial crisis and recession hurt the market for naming rights. As consumers cut back, he said, companies questioned ever-higher prices for sponsorships.

“I don’t think that the market is collapsing, it’s just not as rich as it used to be,” Zimbalist said. He suspects that some teams, including the Cowboys, are turning down reasonable offers in hopes that sky-high prices come back.

Marc Ganis, president of Chicago-based sports business consulting firm Sportscorp Ltd., said CEOs may be gun-shy about naming deals after Citigroup was criticized for paying the Mets while getting $45 billion in federal bailout money.

American Airlines considered giving up its Dallas and Miami arena rights in 2003, when it hovered near bankruptcy. Company officials said such a move has not been considered since. American’s parent company, AMR Corp., has lost nearly $12 billion in the last decade.

It’s hard to determine the value of a company’s name on a stadium or arena, but that doesn’t stop marketing experts from trying.

Front Row Marketing Services estimates that American Airlines will get more than $10 million per game in national advertising. That’s based on the number of times the company’s name appears on screen or is mentioned by broadcasters.

But Front Row, which represents venues in naming-rights deals, assumes that a picture of LeBron James dunking is the same as a national advertising spot for American Airlines as long as there’s an American logo in the background.

“We don’t know if that’s right,” American Airlines spokesman Tim Smith said of the 8-figure estimate, “but there’s value in it, and we’re sure it’s a large amount.”

American has big airport hubs in both Dallas and Miami, and many out-of-towners going to the games will fly on its silver-skinned planes.

“It’s great exposure, and it’s fun,” Smith said. “We’ve got home-court advantage every game.”

Mark Williams, vice president of commercial operations for the Airports Authority of Jamaica, said the walkout left hundreds of disgruntled passengers waiting in airport lobbies.

“All flights in and out have been delayed by a couple of hours,” Williams said. “There have been multiple diversions.”

He said a couple of flights to the Cayman Islands were canceled.

Jamaica’s civil aviation authority called in managers to supervise flights after traffic controllers abandoned their posts Sunday. Spokeswoman Nicole Hutchinson said the agency would “ensure the safety of the industry and we will not operate in such a way to compromise safety.”

Martha Pantin, spokeswoman for American Airlines, the dominant Caribbean carrier, said the company was forced to cancel two flights due to the strike, which coincides with Jamaica’s Labor Day holiday.

At Norman Manley International Airport in the capital, Kingston, about 200 travelers waited for flights near the ticketing counters Monday afternoon.

Evert and Ettle Koster, of Modesto, California, were resigned to waiting for a replacement flight home after their morning departure to Miami was canceled. The couple spent two weeks in Jamaica, where they travel each year.

“Well, you just have to be patient and not get upset because it’s out of your control,” said Ettle Koster, resting her feet on one of their suitcases.

Dutch college students Rosanne Brandjes, 23, and Maaike de Bruijn, 20, were trying to make it back to the southern Caribbean island of Curacao, where they have spent much of the last four months doing internships. They said their afternoon Insel Air flight was diverted due to the strike, leading to an expected delay of more than eight hours.

“We’ve got some paper and a pen so we’ll just play some games and wait,” said Brandjes, who is from a suburb of Amsterdam. “Hopefully we’ll get back tonight, cause we don’t have any money.”

The controllers, who ignored a Supreme Court injunction issued Sunday to return to work, are demanding retroactive pay raises and inclusion in the government’s negotiations over public sector wages.

“The island’s air traffic controllers are restive, and as a result normality cannot be guaranteed at the island’s international airports and within the Jamaican airspace,” the Jamaica Air Traffic Controllers’ Association said in a statement issued Saturday.

Telephone calls to the group’s president and general secretary went unanswered Monday.

The Boeing 737-800, carrying 109 people, was roughly halfway through its flight from Miami to the Caribbean island of St. Lucia when it landed at the airport in Providenciales.

“I know that they landed because of the smell of fumes of cabin. That had to be checked out,” said Peter Forbes, deputy managing director of the British territory’s civil aviation authority.

It was unclear what released the fumes that alarmed the flight crew. Everyone aboard the plane was evacuated safely at the airport and mechanics were evaluating the aircraft, Forbes said.

American Airlines did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

TEMPE, Arizona: US Airways is raising baggage fees by $5 each way, per bag.

The higher fees are the same as those set in recent days by Delta, Continental, and United.

US Airways said on Friday it will charge $25 each way for the first bag, and $35 for a second bag. The increase takes effect for tickets purchased Monday for travel beginning Feb. 1. Travelers who pay in advance online will get a discount of $2 for the first bag fee and $3 for the second.

American Airlines is still charging $20 each way for a first bag, and $30 for the second.

Most of the big carriers added baggage fees in 2008. Southwest Airlines passengers can check two bags for free, and JetBlue passengers can check one for free.

American Airlines plane crash in Jamaica

Offshore lights that guide pilots into Jamaica’s main airport had been knocked out for more than a month when an American Airlines jet landed in driving rain and overshot the runway, injuring most of the 154 people on board, officials said Friday.

An underwater electrical fault in November disrupted the 1,300-foot (400-meter) stretch of white lights on a sandbar stretching into the Caribbean Sea, according to Norman Manley International Airport operations director Stanley Smith. Pilots have been regularly advised about the outage, and the runway itself was fully lit, he said.

“The airport has been fully operational since (the outage) … so we wouldn’t presume that would be a cause. But clearly the investigation is still preliminary,” airport vice president Mark Williams told The Associated Press.

American Airlines Flight 331 skidded off the runway as it landed in heavy rain Tuesday night, arriving from Washington’s Reagan National Airport by way of Miami. The Boeing 737-800′s fuselage cracked open, the left main landing gear collapsed and the nose was crushed as the plane lurched to a halt at the ocean’s edge.

All 154 people aboard survived. Ninety-two were taken to hospitals, with no injuries considered life-threatening. The U.S. State Department said 76 of the passengers were Americans.

Jamaican and U.S. authorities are continuing their investigation, including whether the pilot could have avoided the accident by aborting the landing and circling for another attempt.

The Kingston airport has one runway with two designations, depending on the direction of a plane’s approach. Lights leading to the other end of the runway were functioning, but wind conditions made that approach less desirable, Smith said.

The approach lights are not expected to be operating again until next month. Large planes began arriving at Norman Manley again on Thursday after being diverted to Montego Bay for two days.

Smith said there have been no other incidents of landing problems since the approach lights went out in November.

American Airlines spokeswoman Martha Pantin declined to comment on runway conditions because the investigation is still being conducted. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board’s press office was closed for Christmas.

Jamaican officials expect the probe to be concluded by Sunday, though Civil Aviation Authority director general Oscar Derby told Radio Jamaica he did not know when its conclusions would be released.

AP Photo.