Airports Authority outlines FAQs for domestic passengers at Piarco

The Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go has is­sued a set of fre­quent­ly asked ques­tions as it pre­pares to im­ple­ment changes to the do­mes­tic pas­sen­ger process at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

From Fri­day April 24 2026, do­mes­tic pas­sen­gers will no longer use the ground floor Do­mes­tic De­par­ture Lounge. All de­part­ing trav­ellers will in­stead be redi­rect­ed to a uni­fied gate sys­tem, as the ex­ist­ing in­ter­na­tion­al gates are re­con­fig­ured in­to “all gates”.

The Au­thor­i­ty says the change is aimed at im­prov­ing ef­fi­cien­cy and align­ing op­er­a­tions with in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards, while de­liv­er­ing a more seam­less trav­el ex­pe­ri­ence.

Un­der the new sys­tem, do­mes­tic pas­sen­gers will have ac­cess to a wider range of re­tail and din­ing op­tions across both the east­ern and west­ern wings, in­clud­ing du­ty-paid shop­ping along the du­ty-free cor­ri­dor.

A cen­tralised se­cu­ri­ty check­point has al­so been ex­pand­ed with ad­di­tion­al lanes and ad­vanced screen­ing equip­ment to im­prove flow and re­duce con­ges­tion. The Au­thor­i­ty ad­vis­es pas­sen­gers to fol­low the 3-1-1 rule for liq­uids in car­ry-on bag­gage, lim­it­ing con­tain­ers to 3.4 ounces or less, placed with­in a sin­gle clear, re­seal­able plas­tic bag. Ex­emp­tions ap­ply for med­ica­tion and ba­by food.

In its FAQs, the Au­thor­i­ty con­firmed that do­mes­tic pas­sen­gers will have a ded­i­cat­ed se­cu­ri­ty screen­ing line and are ad­vised to ar­rive around two hours be­fore de­par­ture, in keep­ing with stan­dard do­mes­tic trav­el guid­ance or as ad­vised by Caribbean Air­lines.

Pas­sen­gers ar­riv­ing on in­ter­na­tion­al flights and con­nect­ing to To­ba­go will con­tin­ue to clear Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms at their first port of en­try be­fore pro­ceed­ing. Those ar­riv­ing from To­ba­go will fol­low the ex­ist­ing route to the do­mes­tic bag­gage claim area, which re­mains un­changed.

The Au­thor­i­ty al­so clar­i­fied that Cus­toms pro­ce­dures do not ap­ply to do­mes­tic pas­sen­gers and con­firmed that wheel­chair as­sis­tance re­mains avail­able, with trav­ellers en­cour­aged to no­ti­fy Caribbean Air­lines in ad­vance if need­ed.

The changes form part of a broad­er se­ries of up­grades at Pi­ar­co, with the Au­thor­i­ty work­ing along­side the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, Caribbean Air­lines and oth­er stake­hold­ers to en­sure a smooth tran­si­tion.

“This trans­for­ma­tion forms part of a se­ries of forth­com­ing changes at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, which will en­hance the pas­sen­ger ex­pe­ri­ence while still en­sur­ing con­tin­u­ing com­pli­ance with in­ter­na­tion­al civ­il avi­a­tion stan­dards and rec­om­mend­ed prac­tices.”