Two sets of Cub Scouts who travelled to Guyana for the 14 Caribbean Cuboree were up to last evening stuck at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport (CJIA) due to the cancellation of their InselAir flight, which was caused by the disruption of the airport’s Automated Airlines Check-in services.
The Scouts, who are from Aruba and Curacao, arrived at the airport at 3 am yesterday to board a flight scheduled for 5 am. However, due to damage to the Americas II cable, near the shore of Martinique, the airport’s Automated Airlines Check-in services failed and each passenger had to be checked in manually.
Stabroek News understands that the automated system allows for travellers’ passports to be automatically screened by aviation security systems and check-in clerks can access their reservation in the system. When automated, the process takes seconds but when done manually, it can take as long as 15 minutes per passenger.
Camp Chief of the Cuboree Zaida Joaquin told Stabroek News that she couldn’t understand why the children were not allowed to leave the airport so that they could perhaps return to the hotel rather than spend hours at CJIA.
“We were told by the airline that immigration would not allow them to check out after they had already checked in. These are children and they have been there since 3 am. It would’ve been nice for them to have been able to return to Georgetown and rest. I don’t understand why this was not allowed,” Joaquin said.
According to Gerry Gouveia, CEO of Roraima Airways, which performs ground handling services for InselAir, his staff was unable to manually check in all passengers for the flight on time and as a result the cabin crew’s flight hours expired and they could no longer operate the flight.
“The flight was cancelled and the cabin crew taken to the hotel where they rested. The passengers will now be taken out of Guyana on a flight scheduled for 10.30 this evening [yesterday],” Gouveia told Stabroek News.
In a brief statement, CJIA said it was working with its stakeholders to ensure the Automated Airlines Check-in services were restored as soon as possible.
“The recent damage to the Americas II cable, a high speed internet service to the airlines servers, has affected the linkage between airlines’ check-in application hosts and the check-in counters at CJIA. The disruption has resulted in passengers being processed manually,” it noted, while adding that some airlines were experiencing cancellations due to crew rotation and other operational issues.
“The management of CJIAC will continue to work with its service providers to ensure that the Airline Check-in services are returned to normalcy in the fastest possible time,” it stated.
Meanwhile, the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GTT), noted that despite the cable failure, the internet infrastructure was working well via redundancy/backup routes.
“GTT has redundant infrastructure and is working with the airline reservation management system, SITA [International Society of Aeronautical Telecommunications] to migrate to redundant routes,” it said in a statement.
It added that the cable consortium has been working tirelessly to restore the service and it will continue to provide updates.
