Caribbean Airlines will today bring home 147 Guyanese who were stranded in Jamaica, Cuba and Barbados as the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCCA) has granted approval for another repatriation flight.
Notably, the body of the late President of the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) Komal Chand and national boxers who have been stranded for several months will be returning.
Director-General of the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) Egbert Field yesterday told Stabroek News that the two-stop flight will leave from Kingston, Jamaica, head to Havana, Cuba and then on to Barbados before arriving in Guyana.
Field stated this has been one of the many repatriation flights they have been working on and it had required an unusual amount of coordination.
He also explained that this multi-stop flight had to be coordinated since there are not a whole lot of persons at one location to be repatriated. Returning Guyanese are subjected to a mandatory seven-day home quarantine in addition to providing negative Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test result for COVID-19. Guyanese students and boxers are currently stranded in Cuba and the students have for the past several months been calling on the government to organise a special flight for them to return home during the pandemic. The boxers were training in the Spanish-speaking country and were unable to return home after its borders closed abruptly.
Chand died in Cuba on April 8 following health complications and his family has been making every effort since then to have his body return home.
GCAA had said that after consultation with the Ministry of Public Health, it had adjusted its Four-Phase Reopening Plan for international airports. It said that this decision was made after careful examination of the current COVID-19 situation in Guyana and other international ports where flights to Guyana originate. In recent days Guyana has seen steep increases in the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases.
Phase One which would have ended on June 30 is now extended to July 31, resulting in Phase Two being push back to late August.
Under Phase One, the following flights will continue to be permitted: limited repatriation flights, outgoing flights, cargo flights, medevac flights, technical stops, and special authorised flights.
Guyana borders closed on March 17.