A seasoned Guyanese businessman who spoke to the Stabroek Business on condition that he be described only as a “frequent flier” has said that the recently announced phased re-opening of the Cheddi Jagan and Eugene F Correia International Airports announced by the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) has to be approached with “extreme caution” since “the nature of international air travel allows for things to go wrong once they are overlooked; and believe me, it is easy for things that we have little or no control over to be overlooked,” the businessman added.
Speaking with this newspaper on Tuesday, the businessman said that while he had “noted with interest” what appeared to be “a carefully laid out and phased plan” by GCAA Director Egbert Fields for the reopening of the airports” there was still much that could go wrong if there was no local control over those factors.
The ‘frequent flier’ said that he had noted all of the various protocols and procedures that were being embedded in the system to ensure that, as far as possible, the normalisation of international travel is attended by “as high a measure of safety as possible.” He said, however, that “we still need to be concerned over the behaviour of incoming flights, which, even though they will be bound by codes of behaviour, still allow for errors in judgment over which, for all of the safeguards that we put in place on the ground here in Guyana, we have no control.” The source said that he believed that reducing the possibility of “things going wrong,” can only come about “if the authorities here, first make the rules and protocols clear and, secondly, impose the necessary penalties where deliberate transgressions occur.”
“Of course I can understand the importance of getting air travel up and running again. I am a businessman. You can ask other businessmen and women too. There are some things that you can only take care of yourself and sometimes you have to travel outside of the country to do so.”
And according to the businessman it will take “an enhanced sense of discipline” on the part of travellers if the phased opening is to work. “I have found that there can sometimes be, for some strange reason, a tendency towards indiscipline and rule-breaking among people traveling in our part of the world. If you look at the procedures that Civil Aviation is putting in place for the re-opening of the airports, the whole thing is underpinned by the need for travellers to follow rules, to do as directed,” he said.
Last week Fields said that the GCAA was working towards the phased re-opening of the country’s two international airports and that in the first instance the service will cater to international workers, diplomats and stranded Guyanese and visitors to the country. With what is believed to be a situation in which there are several Guyanese stranded overseas in the wake of the onset of COVID-19, Fields said that bringing them home will be a priority “for some time down the road.” He added, “We hope that by August we’ll be able to open a little more to have visitors from foreign lands.”
Indications are that the GCAA is working in sync with international carriers that service Guyana and at the recent briefing American Airlines reportedly indicated that beginning July 7, it would commence resumption of flights from Miami to Georgetown though it is unlikely that flights out of New York will resume before December. Regional airlines Caribbean Airways and LIAT are also reportedly collaborating with the GCAA to normalise both international and intra-regional flights.
Meanwhile, the businessman told Stabroek Business that he believed that “a significant volume of important business engagements would have had to be set aside” during the period of airport closures” and that this “may well have resulted in financial losses” to the businesses concerned.
“The point is that we can’t now look at what has come and gone. What we need is to get things running again, efficiently and equally importantly, safely”, he said.
