Club MoBay

No subject generates more controversy, second guessing, and consternation than discussions about Club MoBay (except, of course, the "reserving beach chair" discussions, but let's not digress.

Club MoBay is a VIP lounge service offered at Montego Bay - Sangster International Airport. In exchange for a fee of $30 / adult passenger, Club MoBay offers expedited customs and immigration services and a private arrival and departure lounge in one direction (arrival or departure, not both).

For the purposes of discussion, we will limit the scope of our discussion to Club MoBay's Arrival service.

Game Theory
The problem with Club MoBay is that the value of the service is highly dependent on the current line size at Jamaican Customs and Immigration. The assumption is that Couples' guests primarily care about this service since Couples Resorts has their own lounge, which, for the most part, makes Club MoBay's lounge redundant.

So now we present the Club MoBay game. It is a simple game of choice -

Option 1: Passenger purchases Club MoBay arrival service, and is rewarded with a comparatively short passage through customs and immigration as the standard line is quite long.

Option 2: Passenger purchases Club MoBay arrival service and receives low utility from it since the standard line is processing in about the same time as the Club MoBay line.

Option 3: Passenger does not purchase Club MoBay arrival service and waits a long time in the customs and immigration line.

Option 4: Passenger does not purchase Club MoBay arrival service and arrives on a day with a low wait time for customs and immigration.

Technically, this isn't a strict game in the sense of Game Theory or the canonical Prisoner's Dilemma, but I'm not an economist and it seems a bit similiar. A passenger is given a choice - Pay $30 or not. Only once they arrive will they learn the value of their choice.

Who does and doesn't purchase Club MoBay?
That's a good question, and I believe that people generally fall into 3 categories with regards to this:

Category 1: Always Buy - There is a class of traveller who will always purchase the service and never worry about the actual utility gained from such a move. They view Club MoBay as an insurance purchase that guarantees that their vacation will not be delayed due to C&I once on the ground.

Category 2: Never Buy - There is a class of traveller who will never buy Club MoBay. To them, the risk of losing $60 (that they view could be applied to something with much higher utility) is far too great. Therefore, they avoid spending money on the service and shrug off the lost time they might incur.

Category 3: Educated Buy - People in this category wish to make an educated guess regarding the actual utility of the service and choose only to purchase if they believe that they will benefit greatly from the purchase. This varies per individual, but based on the average income level of a Couples guest divided out to produce an hourly rate, it is presumed that most guests would pick a breakeven point in the 1-2 hour range.

The remainder of this page is dedicated to helping those in category 3.

Help for Category 3 People
How to contribute to and use this chart:
 * Each airline has a schedule that indicates the service it provides to Montego Bay.  A given aircraft has a certain capacity.  For each arrival, specify the airline (maybe even the flight no.) and the capacity of the aircraft.  The capacity of the aircraft can (usually) be derived by going to seatguru.com.
 * The flights listed are for the CURRENT PERIOD ONLY (unless otherwise specified).  Since you can purchase Club MoBay within a week of your departure, it is recommended that you WAIT to purchase to ensure that you are seeing the latest schedule.
 * Based on the arrival schedule, guests can better determine whether Club MoBay would be a good purchase.
 * Many other factors affect the uitlity of Club MoBay - delays, staffing, and aircraft load factors are just a few of these.  In other words, your actual mileage may vary.

Status
NOTE - flights within a given hour aren't necessarily listed in order of arrival

Delta (DL) - reviewed 23-March - Focused on flight schedules continuing after early April

American Airlines (AA) - reviewed 23-March -  Focused on flight schedules continuing after early April - Schedule expires after 11-April

US Airways (US) - reviewed 23-March - Focused on flight schedules continuing after early April

User Reports - Was it worth it?
Please use this section to indicate whether Club MoBay was "worth it" on your trip. You don't have to specify how you came to that conclusion, we're just trying to get a general "feeling" here.