— for Guyanese stranded in other Caribbean nations

By Tamica Garnett
DIRECTOR-GENERAL of the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA), Egbert Field, said the agency was actively looking into sourcing repatriation flights for Guyanese stuck in Caribbean nations, but there were several technical aspects that had to be worked out to make the flights affordable.

Approximately 100 Guyanese stuck in various Caribbean islands are facing varying hardships, and are desperate to get back home, hopeful for possible repatriation flights given that Guyana’s airport closure has been extended to at least August 31.

“We are working on it. It’s not that we are not studying them; it’s about finding the appropriate sized aircraft for the journey and the amount of passengers,” Field explained Monday when contacted by Guyana Chronicle.

According to Field, there are several dynamics that have to be considered when it comes to getting the Guyanese home.
“There are a lot of factors which have got to be looked at when we are speaking about the islands, the size of the party from the islands, where they are located, the size of the aircraft that you can get, so we are investigating. But there are not too many airlines operating right now, because a lot of the states have closed their doors,” Fields noted.

After Guyana recorded its first COVID-19 case on March 11, airports in Guyana have been closed to international flights since midnight of March 18, blindsiding many Guyanese, some who had left the country just days before the airport was closed.

Some are facing financial difficulties while overseas; while many others were on annual vacation leave and are worried about how their lengthy absence will affect their jobs, going forward.

Stuck in Antigua, Guyanese Lona Bowen is desperate to get back because her two young sons are in Guyana staying with a family member. Yonette Vankenie-White is also stuck on that island and is yearning to get back home to lay her son to rest. Her son was murdered in July. The funeral has been delayed pending her return.
Though the airports in Guyana are closed, chartered repatriation flights are being allowed; however, because of the arrangements, many of the flights are expensive. With the cost for the flights being borne by the passengers, cost is an important determining factor in sourcing flights.

“Commercial operations are not being conducted, so to move people around you have to charter operators. But when you charter an airline, the airline doesn’t charge the passengers as per ticket, it charges for the entire aircraft and the hours it is being used. So if you charter an aircraft to pick up passengers from say Antigua, if there are only five or ten passengers, the charter cost has to be shared by those five or ten passengers, and that is the difficulty,” Field pointed out.

FINANCIAL STRAIN
Hence, the small number of passengers scattered across the Caribbean is presenting difficulties in finding flights that are within the financial reach of the passengers, many of whom are already dealing with strained finances.

“It’s not like a flight from New York or Miami where it’s a one stop and you have 100 or so passengers, these are small pockets of passengers. So unless they can get a small aircraft to charter to come home, there lies the difficulty how to move them from that location,” Field explained.

In Antigua, for passengers waiting to leave that island , some of the one-way flights cost as much as US$900 (GUY$188, 000), a sum many cannot afford.
“It is a situation where sometimes you get an airline but you have to discard the flight because the price is too high,” Field noted
One such repatriation flight that is expected to return some 50 Guyanese home this weekend, bringing 35 persons from Tortola and another 15 from Antigua. Aside from the cost of the flights, if permission to return is secured, the Guyanese will also have to pay for a COVID-19 test. In Antigua the test is US$115, and once taken the test is valid for only seven days.

Field said the option of consolidating passengers from various Islands is also among the possibilities being explored; however, even that alternative presents logistical obstacles.

“That presents a complication because of the aviation regulations, because a pilot has to get proper rest the crew has to be rested. Sometimes they can only do two or three stage lengths per flight. You might get a flight from A goes to B goes to C but cannot make another stop,” he said.
Nonetheless, the GCAA is trying to reach out to airlines to see what could be made possible.

“At the moment, I’m talking to a company out in Turks and Caicos Island to see if they have an appropriate sized airline to make two or three stops… to see how we can join locations together and combine the load in order that the passengers have less to pay. We have Guyanese in the Bahamas and also in St Maarten, so what we are trying to do is see if we can get something from the Bahamas to Antigua and you combine that load to come in,” he noted.