Despite the government’s reluctance to close its borders amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a slew of international carriers are cancelling flights to Barbados and slashing their services to the island, Minister of Tourism, Kerrie Symmonds has announced.
He explained that a “dramatic escalation” in flight cancellations and accommodations has rendered continued service economically unsustainable, signalling the final blow to an already crippled winter tourist season.
During a Sunday morning press conference, Symmonds explained that flights from Europe, the United Kingdom, Canada and the U.S were all severely affected, while a handful have made exceptions to repatriate visitors to their countries of origin.
He disclosed that the Lufthansa Eurowings flight from Barbados to Frankfurt and other European markets would be suspended from tomorrow, while Condor has already discontinued its service indefinitely.
Since Saturday, Virgin Atlantic has been moving its citizens out of the country en masse, but will suspend its services from tomorrow, according to the tourism minister. British citizens desirous of leaving the country will then have to use British Airways, which will continue their service at least until March 26.
Despite the carrier’s intention to suspend its international service entirely, Symmonds is hoping to broker an arrangement, which will allow medical supplies, food and other necessities into the country once weekly.
In the North American market, American Airlines has suspended operations for Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, but will continue on Thursday, after which the airline will fly twice weekly to Barbados from Miami and once weekly from Charlotte.
“That gives them enough time to repatriate its passengers and also for us to maintain some connectivity with the United States of America. Again, for a number of reasons including the fact that Barbadians who are trying to come home, including students, we must be able to facilitate that. Equally there are numerous supplies being depended on,” Symmonds explained.
JetBlue, meanwhile, suspended operations but will continue to supply a New York service to Barbados on Saturdays. Westjet, which flies to Canada, has ended worldwide operations with no word on when and if the company will restart. Air Canada’s operations will halt on March 31, though discussions are ongoing to secure a once weekly flight. Copa Airlines’ service to Panama has been suspended.
During his remarks this morning, Symmonds thanked the country’s travel-trade partners for their cooperation and willingness to prevent Barbados from being cut off from the international community.
“There is really no way of Barbados provisioning itself. We have no airline of our own to do the types of transatlantic carrying that we would have to do and everything becomes a question of trying to get into the melee of countries lining up to get chartered flights and so forth in order to provision their countries and keep their people going and import commodities,” he added.
Within the region, the tourism minister indicated that LIAT has continued to operate like normal, but he anticipated massive changes would have to be made as demand for the cash-strapped airline slows down with CARICOM member states closing their borders.
“It is my hope that shareholder governments will be as faithful as possible to the determination made to the board recently to the effect that reduced schedules should be maintained, because we anticipate that numerous forms of assistance will have to be given from Barbados to the rest of the CARICOM region,” he urged. (Barbados TODAY)
