Ian Burns, CEO and founder of the short lived bud­get air­line Red­Jet, died on Wednes­day af­ter suf­fer­ing a mas­sive heart at­tack in his na­tive Ire­land. He was 58.Burns, who be­lieved the Caribbean could be uni­fied by af­ford­able and ef­fi­cient air trav­el, launched the start­up low-cost car­ri­er in May 2011. The pri­vate­ly owned air­line was in­cor­po­rat­ed in Bar­ba­dos as Airone Hold­ings Lim­it­ed by Burns and his son Rob­bie and be­gan op­er­at­ing with a fleet of Mc­Don­nell Dou­glas MD-82 and MD-83 air­craft.

Ini­tial­ly Red­Jet sought to start­up op­er­a­tions at Nor­man Man­ley In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in Kingston, Ja­maica. How­ev­er, the air­line shift­ed its hub to Bar­ba­dos af­ter it was de­nied per­mis­sion by Ja­maican au­thor­i­ties. Less than a year af­ter its in­au­gur­al flight, on the night of March 16, 2012, the air­line sus­pend­ed all its ser­vices be­cause of fi­nan­cial trou­ble.On June 8, 2012, a day af­ter dis­miss­ing its 94 work­ers, Red­jet an­nounced it was in­sol­vent. Of­fi­cials of the air­line blamed the gov­ern­ments of Bar­ba­dos, T&T and Ja­maica for de­lay­ing ap­provals and li­cences in fly­ing to each oth­er's des­ti­na­tions, claim­ing a breach of a re­gion­al 'open-skies' pol­i­cy. They said the de­lays cost the air­line mil­lions of dol­lars of start-up cap­i­tal.

Burns was a for­mer part­ner of RSM Rob­son Rhodes, Char­tered Ac­coun­tants and Fi­nan­cial Ad­vi­sors, with ex­per­tise in cor­po­rate fi­nance and busi­ness de­vel­op­ment.