Bruce Nobles, the former chief executive of Hawaiian Airlines, will be taking over as head of Air Jamaica, the airline said earlier this week. He will assume office on Monday.

Nobles, a 40-year veteran of the transportation industry, served as president and chief operating officer of Air Jamaica from June 2002 to March 2003.

He held the top spot at Hawaiian Airlines when it filed for its first Chapter 11 reorganization in 1993, and also held executive positions at Continental Airlines, Republic Airlines and American Airlines.

Nobles said in July that he had been approached by Jamaica Sen. Don Wehby in January to become interim CEO of Air Jamaica. The airline has been bleeding cash at a rate of more than $100 million annually for the last several years, Wehby had said.

This summer, Wehby, who said he had met with the airline's full board to discuss its deteriorating financial condition, gave a four-person short list of possible CEOs, only naming former Aloha Airlines CEO David Banmiller.

Banmiller declined to comment at the time on whether he was chosen since the appointment was waiting final approval from the country's prime minister.

Before serving as CEO of Aloha from November 2004 until the airline's shutdown in April of this year, Banmiller served as the executive vice president and chief operating officer at Air Jamaica.

Later news reports out of Jamaica said Banmiller had been passed over for the top post in favor of former Mesa Air Group executive Edward Wegel.

Nobles most recently worked as president of Dallas-based aviation and transportation consulting company Renwick Co.