Culture Box
Travelling overland most times is a tedious exercise especially when one considers the long line to check in, the immigration process and then the long waiting time before actually boarding an aircraft.
If it is a short plane ride then the hassle is over in a jiffy, but when a plane ride-which should have been short in the first place involves stopping in two other countries, one where you actually have to disembark and then board the very same aircraft again, before arriving at your destination, it can get to you.
But what makes it worse, is when you are forced to leave your home in the wee hours of the morning, wait for hours and make the two stops but are offered nothing to eat by the airline. Food is not something you walk with on an aircraft – okay some people do – and no matter how bad the food is a little something would help to sustain you until you arrive.
Not so with the Caribbean Airlines flight to St Maarten. The passenger is given a small beverage and a muffin on the short flight from Guyana to Trinidad where they are forced to disembark, wait, and then board again. There is nothing offered from Trinidad to Barbados – another stop and wait – or from Barbados to St Maarten. There is no sympathy for those of us who would have left their homes since about 2am in the morning and do not clear immigration until around 11am. By then most of us are so hungry we can hardly think coherently, and it makes you wonder why the airline does not even offer another beverage during that leg of the journey.
Like many things in life it is something that one must contend with, but it does not make it right.
Of course the return trip is no different, but again, like many things in life the airline just had to make life more difficult for their passengers, at least those whose final destination was Guyana.
It is not that I am the complaining type but there are little prickly things in life that can get to you, and one was the handing out of Trinidad & Tobago landing forms to Guyanese passengers by the airline. There were many queries about this but the flight attendant calmly explained that they would be accepted by immigration and customs in Guyana. It sounded a little far fetched but then again she was the one who works with the airline and should know. But either she didn’t know or just didn’t give a damn because of course on arrival in Guyana passengers were told that the forms would not be accepted.
So after a trying time filling up the form with a small child trying to pull away the pen every second or eat the form, you are then forced to write up another one while standing or running behind the child who is fatigued from the journey. You can understand why I was so upset and wondered why the airline staff treated us with such scant regard.
Probably the issues listed above may seem like minor problems when one looks at life in general and all that comes with it, but it would be much easier if such things did not occur.
And to add insult to injury we also had to deal with the Cheddi Jagan International Airport policy of not allowing passengers to exit the customs area with their recently acquired new shiny trolleys.
You are only allowed to use them from the baggage claim area to customs and we all know what a short distance that is. The trolleys are needed, as in other airports, to assist passengers to their vehicles. It is unthinkable that those in authority at the airport would not allow passengers to really make good use of them – or could it be that they want to continue to provide the means for the red caps to continue to earn a little extra on the side. Because ultimately, especially if you have children, you would need assistance to get your baggage out and the assistance does not come free.
The authorities should really consider allowing passengers to make full use of those trolleys or else they would just be white elephants, and the good money spent on them would go to waste.(thescene@stabroeknews.com)