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Sunday, July 6, 2025

CAL passengers angry at extra $pend

by

Shastri Boodan
2450 days ago
20181021

Pas­sen­gers strand­ed in To­ba­go af­ter their Caribbean Air­lines flights were can­celled due to bad weath­er and flood­ing over the past 48 hours are com­plain­ing about hav­ing to fork out their own mon­ey to pay for a longer stay on the is­land. The al­ter­na­tive, they say, is to sleep at the air­port.

Bet­ty-Ann Joseph, a res­i­dent of Ch­agua­nas, said af­ter CAL can­celled flights yes­ter­day they had to cough up cash to stay at a ho­tel with no hopes of be­ing re­im­bursed. Thomas said when she and her fam­i­ly ar­rived at the ANR Robin­son Air­port this morn­ing they were put on a stand­by list at 5 am yes­ter­day there were can­cel­la­tions of flights from To­ba­go. She said CAL staff were al­so im­po­lite and gave no in­for­ma­tion as to what was tak­ing place. Oth­er pas­sen­gers said they were dis­gust­ed at hav­ing to wait so long for in­for­ma­tion.

Ari­ma res­i­dent San­dra Sam­bra­no ar­rived af­ter 8 am in To­ba­go. Sam­bra­no said she trav­elled with a church group and was hap­py to reach on the is­land. She said they were lucky on their trip in Trinidad be­cause from Ari­ma to the Pi­ar­co Air­port there was no flood­ing on the road.

 Sandra Sambrano, left, was just happy to arrive in Tobago from Trinidad, noting they did not encounter any flood waters on their journey to the Piarco International Airport.

Sandra Sambrano, left, was just happy to arrive in Tobago from Trinidad, noting they did not encounter any flood waters on their journey to the Piarco International Airport.

Shastri Boodan

The T&T Spir­it sailed around 9.26 am to­day with a load of pas­sen­gers and ve­hi­cles to Trinidad. On its re­main­ing trips for to­day, it was ex­pect­ed to take all the pas­sen­gers who were due to sail on the Galleons Pas­sage af­ter that ves­sel’s sail­ings were can­celled due to tech­ni­cal is­sues.

The T&T Spirit docked at the Port of Scarborough earlier today. It was expected to take up the extra load of passengers from the Galleons Passage after the vessel's trips for today were cancelled due to technical issues.

The T&T Spirit docked at the Port of Scarborough earlier today. It was expected to take up the extra load of passengers from the Galleons Passage after the vessel's trips for today were cancelled due to technical issues.

Shastri Boodan

Af­fect­ed pas­sen­gers are al­so an­gry about the added mon­ey they will have to pay for park­ing at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port over the week­end when they even­tu­al­ly re­turn to Trinidad. They not­ed that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley la­belled the flood­ing a na­tion­al dis­as­ter and this should be giv­en some con­sid­er­a­tion since they were not re­spon­si­ble for the can­cel­la­tions of their flights.

Asked to com­ment on the air­port park­ing fee, Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan ad­vised Guardian Me­dia to con­tact the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of T&T on the mat­ter.

Ad­dress­ing the is­sue when con­tact­ed, AATT man­ag­er of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions Zo­la Joseph said they were sym­pa­thet­ic to per­sons im­pact­ed by the ad­verse weath­er con­di­tions and are will­ing to as­sist where nec­es­sary. In a sub­se­quent re­lease, she ad­vised that pas­sen­gers who may need con­sid­er­a­tion in re­la­tion to park­ing fees to speak with the cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tives at the in­for­ma­tion booth in the atri­um at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.


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