Raphael John-Lall

raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

Ri­car­do Mil­ford, a pas­sen­ger on BW607, the flight in­to the coun­try when T&T’s bor­ders re­opened yes­ter­day, said he was hap­py to be back home.

“The ex­pe­ri­ence com­ing in was ex­cel­lent,” he told re­porters at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. “I can­not de­scribe it in words. I’m hap­py to be back home.”

Mil­ford was among 18 pas­sen­gers on the Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) flight from George­town which touched down at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port short­ly af­ter 8 am.

It was the first com­mer­cial flight to T&T since the coun­try’s bor­ders closed on March 22, 2020. Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan de­scribed it as a big step for the coun­try.

“We are head­ing in­to the right di­rec­tion mean­ing we have reached the point where we can say that we have opened the bor­ders. We are still in the pan­dem­ic stage so we have to man­age it, but we are hap­py that ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed cit­i­zens and vis­i­tors no longer have to stay in quar­an­tine. That is a big step,” he said.

He added that the TT Trav­el Pass which all pas­sen­gers en­ter­ing the coun­try are re­quired to have, is work­ing as ex­pect­ed.

“Trav­el­ling at this time is your choice, but like every­thing else, there is a risk,” Sinanan said.

He said the re­sponse from pas­sen­gers was pos­i­tive and they were hap­py with the pro­to­cols put in place to re­turn to the coun­try.

The me­dia were giv­en a tour of a COVID-19 test­ing lab at the air­port. Gen­er­al man­ag­er of the Air­port Au­thor­i­ty Hay­den New­town said T&T has tak­en the lead in­ter­na­tion­al­ly by set­ting up test­ing fa­cil­i­ties at the air­port.

“There is no oth­er coun­try in the re­gion where there is a lab in the air­port. We feel that this was very im­por­tant in terms of en­sur­ing we pro­vide the best ser­vices. We’ll do the same thing at the ANR In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in To­ba­go,” he said.

Head of Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, CAL Dionne Ligoure said the first flight out of T&T yes­ter­day was to St Lu­cia.

Ligoure said the rea­son why peo­ple are trav­el­ling now is “very com­plex.”

Minster is Works and Transport Rohan Sinanan, at centre, pose for photo with two returning nationals from Guyana, Daniel Johnson, left, and Raymond Mildford at Piarco International Airport, yesterday.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

“Per­sons trav­el for dif­fer­ent rea­sons. Peo­ple may be trav­el­ling to look af­ter their im­mi­gra­tion sta­tus, per­sons may be trav­el­ling for med­ical rea­sons. Some peo­ple have prop­er­ties abroad. Oth­ers are go­ing to study. It is not nec­es­sar­i­ly all about leisure. It’s a mix of per­sons trav­el­ling,” she said.

Ligoure ap­pealed to trav­ellers to “work with us and ad­here to what is in place for their safe­ty.”

She said trav­el­ling pro­jec­tions for this time of year is down com­pared to pre­vi­ous years.

“This is in line with our own in­for­ma­tion and re­search and al­so in­ter­na­tion­al re­search. The next few weeks show trav­el­ling will be down. Of course, we are do­ing what we can to stim­u­late de­mand. We con­tin­ue to look close­ly at the pas­sen­ger rates and en­sur­ing our pas­sen­gers have a has­sle-free ex­pe­ri­ence.”

Gen­er­al man­ag­er of Navar­ro’s Trav­el Ser­vice, Ian Cor­bie said the trav­el agency in­dus­try has been hard hit by the clo­sure of the bor­ders.

“No agency has had any rev­enue since last year March. It has im­pact­ed very neg­a­tive­ly. One or two agen­cies may have closed en­tire­ly, oth­ers have start­ed to work from home on a lim­it­ed ba­sis. The Gov­ern­ment did some repa­tri­a­tion flights and those flights are sold to CAL so the agents didn’t get a com­mis­sion from that,” he said.

Cor­bie said now that bor­ders have re­opened most of CAL’s seats are “heav­i­ly booked.”

“In Au­gust a lot of peo­ple and their chil­dren go on to uni­ver­si­ties. That’s where rev­enues are com­ing in. Nine­ty per cent of our busi­ness is cor­po­rate but a lot of peo­ple have been call­ing. There are al­so peo­ple who want to re­turn home.”

Ac­coun­tant at Laz­zari and Samp­son Trav­el Ser­vice, Joan­na Nanan ex­pects trav­el to in­crease.

“Peo­ple are call­ing us and they are ea­ger to trav­el. There is the trav­el­ling pro­to­col, but peo­ple are com­ply­ing,” she said.

Some of the pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tions peo­ple are look­ing at trav­el­ling to in­clude Mi­a­mi, New York, Guyana, and Colom­bia.

How­ev­er, Nanan projects that it would take a few years be­fore the in­dus­try re­turns to nor­mal­cy.