Airports Authority postpones Piarco All Gates launch

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

For one week, a dig­i­tal cam­paign promised a new era of ef­fi­cien­cy at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port—a seam­less merg­er of do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al de­par­tures aimed at bring­ing in­ter-is­land trav­el in line with glob­al avi­a­tion stan­dards.

But at 5.39 am yes­ter­day, just 24 hours af­ter the me­dia was in­vit­ed to a rib­bon-cut­ting cer­e­mo­ny, the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (AATT) is­sued a state­ment say­ing the plan had been post­poned “un­til fur­ther no­tice.”

The ini­tia­tive had been out­lined days ear­li­er in an April 18 me­dia re­lease, in which the au­thor­i­ty said it was in­tro­duc­ing changes to the do­mes­tic pas­sen­ger jour­ney aimed at im­prov­ing ef­fi­cien­cy and align­ing op­er­a­tions with in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards.

Un­der the plan, do­mes­tic pas­sen­gers would no longer utilise the do­mes­tic de­par­ture lounge on the ground floor but would in­stead be per­ma­nent­ly redi­rect­ed to ac­cess a uni­fied gate sys­tem as part of a re­con­fig­u­ra­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al gates in­to “All Gates.”

The au­thor­i­ty had said the shift would “stream­line pas­sen­ger pro­cess­ing and sup­port a more seam­less trav­el ex­pe­ri­ence.”

Yet for many trav­ellers, the pro­pos­al has raised more ques­tions than con­fi­dence.

Nicole Soogrim, own­er of the To­ba­go vil­la Nico’s Nook, said the ex­ist­ing sys­tem had worked ef­fi­cient­ly and ques­tioned the need for change.

“I have nev­er had an ex­pe­ri­ence where we’re go­ing To­ba­go and you feel un­com­fort­able; you feel like the wait­ing room is over­filled. In no time, you get through to wait in the ter­mi­nal to de­part. So, it’s a lit­tle con­fus­ing to me, and most of the peo­ple I spoke to, as to why the change,” she said.

“Cause it’s be­ing sold to us as more ef­fi­cient, but we did not have an is­sue to be­gin with, so that is what is a lit­tle bit con­cern­ing.”

For Soogrim and oth­er fre­quent trav­ellers, con­cerns ex­tend be­yond con­ve­nience to what they de­scribe as the cul­tur­al fric­tion of merg­ing do­mes­tic rou­tines with in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty pro­to­cols.

“Now and then I would walk with some crazy stuff, like plants,” Soogrim said.

“I’m won­der­ing if, now that I’m go­ing through where in­ter­na­tion­al per­sons are, if there will be re­stric­tions on things we nor­mal­ly trav­el to To­ba­go with.”

That un­cer­tain­ty was echoed by pas­sen­gers who have al­ready ex­pe­ri­enced el­e­ments of the pro­posed sys­tem. One To­ba­go res­i­dent, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, de­scribed a re­cent trip through the in­ter­na­tion­al de­par­ture area as “un­nec­es­sary,” not­ing that do­mes­tic trav­ellers were still un­able to ac­cess du­ty-free shop­ping.

Not all re­spons­es have been crit­i­cal. Ndu-bisi Hall, a sports ac­tivist and To­ba­go na­tive, said the ini­tia­tive should be giv­en a chance, even as he ac­knowl­edged the sim­plic­i­ty of the cur­rent arrange­ment.

“As a To­bag­on­ian, it’s al­ways re­al­ly easy, very con­ve­nient for us just to go right there and get on the flight,” Hall said. “But for me, I would say let’s see how it goes.”

The au­thor­i­ty said it was work­ing with the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, Caribbean Air­lines and oth­er stake­hold­ers to en­sure a smooth tran­si­tion. For now, how­ev­er, the plan re­mains on hold, with no time­line for its im­ple­men­ta­tion.

At­tempts by Guardian Me­dia to reach Trans­port Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our for clar­i­fi­ca­tion on whether the ini­tia­tive has been scrapped were un­suc­cess­ful. Sim­i­lar ef­forts to con­tact AATT of­fi­cials and the Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) chair­man al­so went unan­swered up to press time.