RYAN BA­CHOO

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

There were mixed re­views on Caribbean Air­lines’ ser­vice at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port yes­ter­day, as scores of peo­ple lined up to catch flights to their des­ti­na­tions, in­clud­ing New York, Bar­ba­dos, St Lu­cia and Toron­to. While some were able to fi­nal­ly fly to their var­i­ous des­ti­na­tions, oth­ers strand­ed by the pi­lots’ ac­tion on the week­end wait­ed for a flight back to Toron­to.

Long lines could be seen lead­ing to the CAL coun­ters at the air­port.

One man, who on­ly want­ed to be iden­ti­fied as Mukesh, said he had been wait­ing since Sat­ur­day for CAL’s Toron­to ser­vice. He was al­ready in the line for over an hour when Guardian Me­dia spoke to him.

“No one from Caribbean Air­lines has come to help me. This is ridicu­lous,” Mukesh said.

Oth­ers had pre­pared to stick it out in or­der to get on their flights. Bar­ba­dos-bound flight BW216, which Lav­el Cud­joe was sched­uled to get on, was al­ready show­ing as de­layed.

She said, “It’s not nice. Our flight is de­layed but we’re in the line and un­der pres­sure,” she said, while laugh­ing. Cud­joe added, “They have been help­ful. We have al­ready weighed our lug­gage and per­tain­ing to Caribbean Air­lines, I’m sure I’ll get all the in­for­ma­tion I need at the desk. We’re stick­ing it out.”

She’s one of sev­er­al peo­ple who said they had lit­tle trou­ble get­ting in­for­ma­tion from the air­line.

Carlis­sa Har­ry said, “The line is a bit long and it’s a tak­ing a bit long. I got emails up­dat­ing me on my flight so I’m hap­py with the ser­vice.”

Oth­ers told Guardian Me­dia the app was giv­ing them up­dates on when their flights would be ar­riv­ing and the up­dat­ed de­par­ture times.

Up to yes­ter­day, Caribbean Air­lines was still at­tempt­ing to clear a back­log of pas­sen­gers af­ter last week­end’s op­er­a­tional melt­down. Hun­dreds of pas­sen­gers hop­ing to board a CAL flight were left dis­ap­point­ed from Sat­ur­day evening in­to Sun­day morn­ing, as they were greet­ed with news of can­cel­la­tions. They were told a se­vere staff short­age at Caribbean Air­lines was to blame. Caribbean Air­lines, in a me­dia re­lease then, blamed the can­cel­la­tions on “cock­pit crew con­straints”.

Cal­cu­la­tions are still be­ing done but it is es­ti­mat­ed that CAL lost over $15 mil­lion dur­ing the two-day flight dis­rup­tion of its op­er­a­tions, ac­cord­ing to sources with­in the air­line.

The air­line has since apol­o­gised to thou­sands of pas­sen­gers strand­ed through­out the Caribbean and in T&T and put the blame square­ly on its pi­lots.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, CAL said it ex­pect­ed its op­er­a­tions to be ful­ly re­stored by to­day. It said it had con­tract­ed an ex­ter­nal com­pa­ny to stage five char­ter flights to take the af­fect­ed in­ter­na­tion­al pas­sen­gers to their des­ti­na­tions.