Camille Clarke

Hun­dreds of Trinida­di­ans liv­ing in the Unit­ed States and oth­er tourists seek­ing to come to T&T for the start of ma­jor Car­ni­val fes­tivites were left strand­ed yes­ter­day, af­ter a ma­jor snow­storm forced the can­cel­la­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al flights at the JFK In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in New York. Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) flight and oth­ers des­tined for T&T were af­fect­ed as the storm slammed in­to the north-east­ern seaboard of the US.

New York Gov­er­nor An­drew Cuo­mo de­clared a state of emer­gency yes­ter­day af­ter­noon be­cause of the storm, named Nemo. The ex­treme weath­er con­di­tions were ex­pect­ed to last un­til to­day and the fore­cast was for up to 20 inch­es of snow in the New York City re­gion with wind gusts that could ex­ceed 60 miles per hour, ac­cord­ing to me­te­o­rol­o­gists at the US Na­tion­al Weath­er Ser­vice.

The storm be­gan to un­fold across the north-east­ern US with bliz­zard con­di­tions yes­ter­day morn­ing. Bliz­zard warn­ings were in ef­fect for much of the coastal parts of the north­east from Newark in New Jer­sey and New York City to the Cana­di­an bor­der. CAL is­sued a flight ad­vi­so­ry on Thurs­day evening be­cause of the loom­ing storm, as flights in­to and out of JFK Air­port were can­celled. CAL com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Clint Williams yes­ter­day said, "The storm came on at the worst time for Car­ni­val lovers.

Caribbean Air­lines promis­es quick re­lief

It is a peak pe­ri­od in the next few days and it is our du­ty to en­sure that every­one gets h ere sa fe ly." Three flights–BW010, BW501 and BW521, in­clud­ing one to Mon­tego Bay in Ja­maica–were still able to de­part from JFK yes­ter­day morn­ing. "We were able to de­part be­fore the weath­er de­te­ri­o­rat­ed."

How­ev­er, he added, "We can't fly out of JFK now. The weath­er is ex­pect­ed to main­tain and sus­tain un­til noon on Sat­ur­day. We are in close com­mu­ni­ca­tion with FAA (Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion) as to when the air­port will re­open to re­sume flights." CAL is work­ing on pro­vid­ing ad­di­tion­al flights when the weath­er per­mits

"We have been in con­tact with air­craft sup­pli­ers of leased air­crafts to be­gin plan­ning a pos­si­ble in­crease in air­lifts when we are able to fly," said Williams.How­ev­er, he warned, "We would still de­pend on JFK au­thor­i­ties when flights would be grant­ed. There are thou­sands of flights that leave JFK and a lot of peo­ple would like to pick up dis­rupt­ed pas­sen­gers.

"We are get­ting every up­date so we will have a more ac­cu­rate up­date and and fly ear­ly af­ter­noon...We won't know un­til to­mor­row," he said.Williams said the air­line had a trav­el guar­an­tee pol­i­cy and de­tails would be post­ed on CAL's Web site and on its Face­book page.In the mean­time, there has not been any dis­rup­tion in ser­vice at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, de­spite protest ac­tion tak­en by Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers.

The of­fi­cers have been stay­ing away from work since Tues­day in protest of the non-pay­ment of trav­el al­lowances, but Air­port Au­thor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er, Zo­la Joseph, said things were pro­ceed­ing nor­mal­ly de­spite this."At this time there is no is­sue with im­mi­gra­tion. They had on­go­ing is­sues but it has been re­solved and things are flow­ing smooth­ly at this time," Joseph said.