A repa­tri­a­tion flight left New York on Sep­tem­ber 23. With the lo­cal al­ter­nat­ing repa­tri­a­tion plan for cit­i­zens in the USA, the oth­er flight which may be ten days af­ter will be from Mi­a­mi.

This means cit­i­zens that are in New York and the Unit­ed States east coast may have to wait 20 more days for the next flight (Sev­en days quar­an­tine, three days san­i­tiz­ing/prepar­ing quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties and the process is re­peat­ed for repa­tri­at­ed cit­i­zens from Mi­a­mi).

This means 20 more days of lim­it­ed re­sources, de­cline in men­tal health, and im­mea­sur­able de­pres­sion, anx­i­ety and frus­tra­tion.

If cit­i­zens from New York can­not en­dure this ex­tra time, they will have to take a flight to Mi­a­mi in sync with the next repa­tri­a­tion flight to Trinidad. Not on­ly is this an ad­di­tion­al cost but a risk in board­ing the flights on time. No loi­ter­ing or wait­ing in air­ports are al­lowed and US do­mes­tic flights’ times are de­layed quite of­ten now.

Thus, strand­ed cit­i­zens are now ex­posed to two air­ports and the two states where COVID-19 cas­es are the high­est in the US.

Al­so, bag­gage re­stric­tions for do­mes­tic flights across states means strand­ed cit­i­zens that are al­ready cash strapped will have to find that mon­ey to pay for ex­tra lug­gage (pro­vid­ing the air­lines fa­cil­i­tate or of­fer such ser­vice at this time) .

I sug­gest if repa­tri­a­tion is done with 100 per­sons at a time (tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties in T&T), op­er­ate a flight from Mi­a­mi with 50 pas­sen­gers and an­oth­er from New York with 50 pas­sen­gers si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, back to back flights (per­haps Sat­ur­day and Sun­day), or take 50 per­sons from New York, stop of at Mi­a­mi and take the oth­er 50 be­fore head­ing to Trinidad.

We may think this is not fi­nan­cial­ly fea­si­ble but from a cost/ben­e­fit analy­sis per­spec­tive this will ben­e­fit na­tion­als abroad that have al­ready en­dured many dis­com­forts and men­tal or­deals.

We need to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion that Caribbean Air­lines is the on­ly le­git­i­mate en­ti­ty to con­duct repa­ra­tions flights.

These flights from the USA can cost cit­i­zens any­where from US$600 plus tax­es and up. This ac­counts for at least a 300 per cent in­crease in the cost for a flight that usu­al­ly costs US$200 or less post-COVID. Not for­get­ting to men­tion that meal and bev­er­age ser­vices are sus­pend­ed.

While I am aware that Caribbean Air­lines is go­ing through a fi­nan­cial­ly tur­bu­lent pe­ri­od, which is the case for the air­line in­dus­try across the board, I am sure our na­tion­al car­ri­er could step up to their cor­po­rate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and help hun­dreds of strand­ed na­tion­als dur­ing this time.