Dear Editor,
On Saturday, July 19, I waited in the Timehri Airport’s waving gallery for Insel Air Flight 81 790 to arrive at its scheduled 10.30 pm. First, I noticed an SLM flight arriving from Miami a good time after its scheduled arrival because, I learnt, of a rainstorm in South Florida, but the monitors still had “on time” throughout. Then long after this flight departed for Suriname, the monitors still read “now boarding.”
Flight 81 790 left Aruba at 8.50 pm instead of the scheduled 8.15 pm for Guyana, because it waited for passengers coming from a Miami-Aruba flight connecting to Guyana, which was late owing to the same rainstorm that affected SLM. Some local journalists/reporters arrived on 81 790, and they can verify this. If I didn’t have internet access from my mobile device, I might’ve been ‘lost at sea’ indefinitely. When I logged onto the accurate Aruba Queen Beatrix Airport’s website, I was able to get the correct info about flight 81 790’s new departure time for Guyana. Timehri’s PA system also wasn’t working, so persons without internet access waiting for arrivals had no idea how long they might have to wait. Such backwardness can easily turn off tourists and visitors.
A former President often used the word “mediocrity” to describe these things. Misleading information on these monitors also shows up on the Timehri Airport’s website, so worldwide surfers can see for themselves this mediocrity, despite the fact that hardly more than eight flights arrive/depart Timehri daily from/to overseas destinations, peak or off-peak.
Little Aruba, on the other hand, has at least thirty flights daily, and is served by reputable carriers including KLM, JetBlue, COPA, Southwest, Delta, United etc. Many of our youths may not know major airlines such as British Airways, Air France, PANAM and KLM served Timehri up to the 1970s. It seems things have moved a good way backwards since then. Now perhaps just COPA, which shares its Mileage Plus frequent flyer programme with other ‘big shots’ like United, Air Canada and Air New Zealand, looks like the only airline serving Guyana that is well known worldwide. Also, the pull-out of Delta last year seems to tell us Guyana ‘ain’t ready yet’ for the world’s name-brand metal birds. Sometime back, I remember a Delta plane arriving at Timehri about forty-five minutes early, but the airport’s monitors still read “on time,” rather than indicating that the flight had come much earlier.
Let’s hope this and lists of other mediocrities won’t prompt newcomers such as Insel Air and COPA to follow Delta’s departure any time soon.
Yours faithfully,
Esther Robinson
