One day af­ter strik­ing air­port work­ers caused ma­jor de­lays and can­cel­la­tions at St Lu­cia’s Hewanor­ra In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port (UVF), its main in­ter­na­tion­al air­port, the In­ter­na­tion­al Air Trans­port As­so­ci­a­tion (IA­TA) is call­ing on stake­hold­ers to im­ple­ment long-term struc­tur­al changes to im­prove the is­land’s avi­a­tion sec­tor.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 80 per cent of the staff at the air­port’s on­ly ground han­dling provider called in sick, dis­rupt­ing op­er­a­tions at the air­port. Saint Lu­cia Air and Sea Ports Au­thor­i­ty (SLAS­PA), the or­gan­i­sa­tion with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for man­ag­ing UVF, con­firmed the dis­rup­tions in a late evening re­lease.

It said, “The Hewanor­ra In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port ex­pe­ri­enced flight dis­rup­tions as a re­sult of what ap­peared to be in­dus­tri­al ac­tion by staff of the Ground Han­dling Ser­vice Provider at the air­port. Through a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort by the air­lines, se­nior man­age­ment per­son­nel of the Ground Han­dler, air­port Stake­hold­ers and SLAS­PA, most flight op­er­a­tions were fa­cil­i­tat­ed. How­ev­er, some de­lays were ex­pe­ri­enced and there were three flight can­cel­la­tions as a re­sult.”

The Saint Lu­cia Air and Sea Ports Au­thor­i­ty al­so apol­o­gised to all pas­sen­gers in­con­ve­nienced as a re­sult of the in­dus­tri­al ac­tion.

But in a me­dia re­lease, IA­TA, which rep­re­sents over 300 air­lines around the world, said the work­ers’ ac­tion has “dam­aged con­fi­dence in Saint Lu­cia’s sole avi­a­tion gate­way.”

Pe­ter Cerdá, IA­TA’s re­gion­al vice pres­i­dent for the Amer­i­c­as, said, “We are al­so seek­ing di­rect en­gage­ment with the Min­is­ters of Trans­port and Tourism to en­sure a swift res­o­lu­tion to this labour dis­pute and to dis­cuss long-term re­forms to pre­vent such vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties in the fu­ture.” 

The trade as­so­ci­a­tion is al­so call­ing for more ground-han­dling ser­vice providers to be made avail­able at UVF.

Pas­sen­gers af­fect­ed by Sat­ur­day’s can­cel­la­tions were ex­pect­ed to be re-ac­com­mo­dat­ed on flights de­part­ing yes­ter­day.

Sev­er­al ma­jor car­ri­ers of­fer sched­uled flights in­to Hewanor­ra In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in­clud­ing Jet­Blue, Amer­i­can Air­lines, West­Jet, Delta, and British Air­ways.