The Guyana gov­ern­ment Wednes­day crit­i­cised Amer­i­can Air­lines for con­tin­u­ing to “pay scant re­gard” to its re­quests af­ter two Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) prime min­is­ters, T&T's Dr Kei­th Row­ley and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Dr Ralph Gon­salves be­came the lat­est high-lev­el of­fi­cials to fall vic­tim to the air­line’s pol­i­cy.

In a state­ment, the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs said that the air­line had re­fused to al­low Dr Row­ley and Dr Gon­salves, who were here at­tend­ing the 2023 In­ter­na­tion­al En­er­gy Con­fer­ence and Ex­po, to check in through the VIP Lounge at the Ched­di Ja­gan In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port (CJIA).

Not­ing that it was not tak­ing any blame for the undig­ni­fied treat­ment of the vis­it­ing Caribbean lead­ers, the min­istry said that based on pre­vi­ous sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ences with Amer­i­can Air­lines, the car­ri­er had been asked for­mal­ly to ac­cord the nec­es­sary treat­ment to the two lead­ers to no avail.

“All Gov­ern­ment pro­to­cols were in place to fa­cil­i­tate their de­par­ture. De­spite Amer­i­can Air­lines hav­ing been writ­ten to, pri­or to the ar­rival of the Prime Min­is­ters in Guyana, for them to be ac­cord­ed the cour­te­sies of check-in on de­par­ture from the VIP Lounge, the air­line re­fused to ac­qui­esce to the Min­istry’s re­quest and in­sist­ed that the Prime Min­is­ters leave the Lounge to present them­selves to the check-in counter,” the For­eign Min­istry said.

The For­eign Min­istry said the Guyana gov­ern­ment in­tends to for­mal­ly com­mu­ni­cate its dis­plea­sure of this most re­cent ac­tion by the air­line that has caused “em­bar­rass­ment not on­ly na­tion­al­ly, but al­so to our re­gion­al friends”.

The min­istry said it “sin­cere­ly re­grets the in­con­ve­nience” caused to the two vis­it­ing prime min­is­ters, who were trav­el­ling to Mi­a­mi, en route to the Ba­hamas for the 44th Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) sum­mit that gets un­der­way in Nas­sau lat­er on Wednes­day evening.

The For­eign Min­istry said the Guyana gov­ern­ment had pre­vi­ous­ly protest­ed this po­si­tion tak­en by Amer­i­can Air­lines against its own High and se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials but with­out suc­cess.

“They have con­tin­ued to pay scant re­gard to the Gov­ern­ment’s re­quests for en­ti­tle­ments to the po­si­tions held to be re­spect­ed,” the min­istry said.