Pas­sen­gers trav­el­ling to Trinidad from To­ba­go on Caribbean Air­lines flight num­ber BW1501 on Sat­ur­day morn­ing al­leged that no COVID-19 safe­ty pro­to­cols were fol­lowed at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port be­fore board­ing the first flight.

How­ev­er, man­age­ment in­sists that Caribbean Air­lines is op­er­at­ing with­in the full pa­ra­me­ters of the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nances and has al­so been ob­serv­ing in­ter­na­tion­al and in­dus­try reg­u­la­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to the trav­ellers, when they reached at the air­port there were no vis­i­ble hand wash­ing or sani­ti­sa­tion sta­tions at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port and trav­ellers were al­so not di­rect­ed by staff to sani­tise their hands. The trav­ellers al­so said that they went through the en­tire check-in process be­fore pro­ceed­ing to the wait­ing area and no tem­per­a­ture checks were done be­fore board­ing the flight to Trinidad.

The trav­ellers said they were equal­ly dis­ap­point­ed with the lack of COVID-19 safe­ty pro­to­cols at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in Trinidad be­cause af­ter leav­ing the air­port and re-en­ter­ing mo­ments af­ter to go to the food court, staff took their tem­per­a­ture but no one in­sist­ed that trav­ellers sani­tise or wash hands.

Pas­sen­gers trav­el­ling last week and the week be­fore al­so ex­pressed sim­i­lar con­cerns.

Car­libbean Air­lines: We ad­here to all cur­rent in­ter­na­tion­al guide­lines

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Caribbean Air­lines' Head of Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Dionne Ligoure on the caim and she said Caribbean Air­lines ad­heres to all cur­rent in­ter­na­tion­al guide­lines us­ing mul­ti­ple lay­ers of pro­tec­tion to en­sure the safe­ty and well-be­ing of cus­tomers.

Ligoure said cus­tomers must wear face masks at check-in, at the gate and on board the air­craft. She said the air­craft are cleaned dai­ly at all ports and the dis­in­fec­tants used are ap­proved as ef­fec­tive against COVID-19. She said the 737 jet fleet is equipped with state-of-the-art high-ef­fi­cien­cy par­tic­u­late air (HE­PA) fil­ters that cap­ture 99.97 per cent of par­ti­cles. And while Ligour said all cus­tomers (in­clud­ing chil­dren) may be sub­ject to tem­per­a­ture checks, there was no ref­er­ence to hand wash­ing or sani­ti­sa­tion. Based on the de­tails lat­er pro­vid­ed, she said the en­quiry should be di­rect­ed to the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty

The Min­istry of Health has de­vel­oped COVID-19 pol­i­cy based on World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion and Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion in­ter­im guid­ance for busi­ness­es and em­ploy­ers re­spond­ing to COVID-19. Un­der the sub­sec­tion “Core Rec­om­men­da­tions Aimed at Pre­vent­ing and Con­trol­ling COVID-19” sec­tion 7.1.3 ad­dress­es per­son­al hy­giene. Ac­cord­ing to the pol­i­cy, in­sti­tu­tions are re­quired to “Pro­vide an ad­e­quate sup­ply of 60 per cent al­co­hol-based hand san­i­tiz­er or hand wash­ing fa­cil­i­ties or sta­tions (fixed or portable) at work­places and job sites so em­ploy­ees and the gen­er­al pub­lic/vis­i­tors/cus­tomers can wash their hands fre­quent­ly with soap and run­ning wa­ter.”