Georgetown: The Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) is working towards the phased re-opening of international travel, commencing July 1, 2020, first catering to persons such as international workers, diplomats and stranded Guyanese and subsequently to visitors, according to Director- General of the GCAA, Lt. Col. (Ret’d) Egbert Field, at a GCAA-hosted webinar on Monday dubbed “Path to Clear Skies”.
Present were the Regional Director of International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO); representatives from International Air Transport Association (IATA); representatives from American Airlines, LIAT and Caribbean Airlines; representatives from the Cheddi Jagan International Airport (CJIA) and Eugene F. Correia (Ogle) International Airport; Director General (DG) of Guyana Tourism Authority (GTA) and a number of other international agencies.
Field explained: “Limited international flights for international workers, diplomats — we’re looking at that — and increased repatriation flights because we’ll be doing that for some time down the road because there are so many Guyanese that are stranded out there. We hope that by August we’ll be able to open a little more to have visitors from foreign lands.”
At the meeting, American Airlines proposed that it would be able to resume flights to Guyana out of Miami beginning July 7, 2020. However, they will not be able to facilitate flights out of New York until December, due to various constraints.
“You just can’t re-open the door like that. It’s like a car, you have to warm it up, they have to get their operations wound up slowly, slowly. Bring back the aircraft; do the checks on those aircraft before they even put them out there to fly; the pilots who were furloughed or where ever, you have to bring them back batch by batch and put them through recurrent training before they release them out there, and they cannot do all that in one go,” Field said.
LIAT and Caribbean Airlines are also working to phase in continuous travel once again, and will conduct their operations to other countries until Guyana re-opens for regional travel.
Field said the first of the four phases is planning – this will run for approximately four weeks and includes repatriation flights, special organized flights, outgoing flights, medevac flights, technical stops, training and also establishing regulations and standard operating procedures.
The second phase –implement- includes the reopening for limited incoming flights for returning Guyanese and international workers scheduled to start on July 1, 2020, to July 31, 2020.
The third phase will include an expansion of the second phase and will run from August 1, 2020, to December 31, 2020, and is expected to include scheduled outgoing flights.
Guyana’s airports are likely to be fully operational in early 2021.
It was highlighted that the final phase will depend on several factors which include the readiness of other countries, the removal of travel restrictions and the number of active COVID-19 cases in Guyana and other countries.
The final phase is expected to start in January 2021 and run for a three month period.
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