Visitors delayed by Beryl frustrated; push to return home
Published:Friday | July 5, 2024 | 12:07 AMJanet Silvera/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
A wave of frustration swept through Sangster International Airport last evening as passengers, whose flights had been cancelled due to Hurricane Beryl, were informed that they wouldn’t be able to fly out until as late as next Tuesday.
The airport resumed operations at 6 p.m. on Thursday, hours after Hurricane Beryl swept past the island, causing only minimal damage to the island’s tourism product while wreaking havoc on the breadbasket parishes of St Elizabeth and Manchester.
Sangster International Airport was ready to welcome travellers. However, airlines were still ramping up operations and have yet to resume their flights. The first flight scheduled to arrive in the tourism capital city is a JetBlue airline from New York at 8:45 Friday morning, MBJ Airports Limited confirmed.
“We got to Jamaica on the 24th June and were supposed to leave on July 1st. Our flight was pushed back to the 3rd, then pushed back to the 4th. Now we are being told we won’t be able to leave Jamaica until the 9th, which is next Tuesday,” husband and wife Deon and Mia Jones shared with The Gleaner.
Both women were booked to travel on Southwest Airlines to Texas in the United States but say they had a flight on July 4 for 3 p.m. However, when they went to the airport, they were told to return at 6 p.m. “We came back, and now we are being told there are no flights leaving tonight at all, and there is no one from the airline to speak to any of us,” said Mia.
The situation was the same for Nigel Rowe, who came to Jamaica from the United Kingdom for a family funeral but who says that owing to the absence of electricity and communication in the district where he was staying, he was advised to visit the airport to speak with an airline representative.
“When we got to the airport it was locked, shut, and we have not been able to find a hotel. There is no room in the inn at any hotel that has electricity, so we are going to sit in the airport and wait until in the morning to see if we can get a flight back to the UK,” said Rowe, whose tour operator is TUI UK.
It is not clear what caused the airport to reopen at 6 p.m., having not sustained any damage from the storm. However, MBJ’s commercial manager, Sharon Hislop, confirmed earlier Thursday afternoon that the facility was still operating on back-up power.
At the time Hislop said they were still awaiting information from airlines to confirm flight operations.
This was after four women who arrived on the island from Nashville, Tennessee, in the United States on June 29 complained to The Gleaner that they were stranded without money to secure accommodation, hours after they checked out of the hotel where they were staying.
“We were scheduled to leave the island on July 3rd (the day Hurricane Beryl affected the island), but our flight was cancelled. We went to the airport today (Thursday) because our flight was rescheduled for 1 p.m., but were told they (airport) don’t have power,” Keisha Warfield told The Gleaner.
According to her, they had no options because they had run out of money.
“We are stranded.”
Elena Warfield, who says it was her first time to Jamaica and the first time out of the USA, said she was not expecting a hurricane, and efforts to find a hotel with electricity that could accommodate them proved futile.
“We were also unable to access money from the ATM because of the absence of power, or find food, as few restaurants in the town of Montego Bay were open.”
As the airport return to normalcy, Hislop is urging airport workers to return to their respective posts as of this morning (Friday) whether they are rostered to work early or afternoon shifts.
In the meantime, Jamaica’s Minister of Tourism, Edmund Bartlett, has said that there has been no major tourism fallout following the passage of the hurricane.
“While there have been some reports of fallen trees, debris, flooding, and power outages, we are grateful that there has been no wide-scale impact to our general tourism infrastructure,” he stated in a press release.
Bartlett shared that the Tourism Emergency Operations Centre, which was set up at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel in Kingston, reported that a limited number of tourists required relocation due to blocked roadways or due to precautionary measures.
“Thanks to the collaborative efforts of our TEOC team and tourism partners, visitors were safely relocated from one location to another,” he explained.
The tourism minister continued: “We are also aware of isolated reports of property damage. Post-hurricane impact assessments are now under way and are being led by the Tourism Product Development Company’s product-quality team, and we will have a clearer picture of the steps that will have to be taken to address any concerns in the coming days.
“Our resilience and collaboration in the face of adversity were again demonstrated over the last few days, and I am confident that the industry will recover rapidly and emerge even stronger,” Bartlett added.