Airlines scramble to resume flights as US lifts Caribbean airspace restrictions

Brent Pin­heiro

Re­porter

brent.pin­[email protected]

Re­stric­tions that barred US air­lines from op­er­at­ing in sev­er­al Caribbean and South Amer­i­can air­spaces at any al­ti­tude have been lift­ed.

The de­ci­sion came a day af­ter mul­ti­ple No­tices to Air­men (NO­TAMs) were is­sued by the US Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion (FAA) for parts of the Cu­raçao, Mai­quetía, Pi­ar­co and San Juan Flight In­for­ma­tion Re­gions. The FAA cit­ed “safe­ty-of-flight risks as­so­ci­at­ed with on­go­ing mil­i­tary ac­tiv­i­ty” in Venezuela.

In a late-night post on X, for­mer­ly Twit­ter, U.S. Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Sean Duffy said: “The orig­i­nal re­stric­tions around the Caribbean air­space are ex­pir­ing at 12.00 am ET and flights can re­sume.” He ad­vised pas­sen­gers to con­tact their re­spec­tive air­lines as car­ri­ers worked to re­store sched­ules.

In a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia on Sat­ur­day, Unit­ed Air­lines said it was prepar­ing to re­sume Caribbean ser­vices, be­gin­ning with de­par­tures to San Juan, Puer­to Ri­co. Luis Muñoz Marín In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port (SJU), one of the re­gion’s busiest hubs, record­ed more than 400 flight can­cel­la­tions on Sat­ur­day, ac­cord­ing to da­ta from flight-track­ing web­site FlightAware.

Unit­ed said it ex­pect­ed to op­er­ate most sched­uled flights yes­ter­day and planned to add ad­di­tion­al ser­vices to ac­com­mo­date af­fect­ed cus­tomers. The air­line urged pas­sen­gers to check their flight sta­tus and make use of trav­el waivers where ap­plic­a­ble.

New York-based Jet­Blue al­so said it was work­ing to re­sume flights and might add ex­tra ser­vices. In a me­dia state­ment, the air­line apol­o­gised to cus­tomers, say­ing, “We un­der­stand this is a busy trav­el week­end for many cus­tomers, and we’re do­ing every­thing pos­si­ble to sup­port those af­fect­ed by the dis­rup­tion.”

Pas­sen­gers were en­cour­aged to check their flight sta­tus on­line or via the Jet­Blue app. The air­line said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 215 flights were can­celled due to the US mil­i­tary ac­tion.

Mean­while, Dal­las-based Amer­i­can Air­lines, which can­celled all flights to 19 Caribbean air­ports on Sat­ur­day, said it added near­ly 5,000 seats on top of its sched­uled ser­vices. Ad­di­tion­al flights were de­ployed to des­ti­na­tions in­clud­ing An­tigua, Aru­ba, Bar­ba­dos, Cu­raçao, Do­mini­ca and St Lu­cia.

The air­line al­so said it was op­er­at­ing larg­er air­craft in the re­gion, in­clud­ing a Boe­ing 777-300 to San Juan, Puer­to Ri­co—the largest air­craft in its fleet—de­scrib­ing its re­sponse as an “all hands on deck” ef­fort to as­sist cus­tomers af­fect­ed by the air­space clo­sures.

Al­though a Con­flict Zone In­for­ma­tion Bul­letin is­sued by the Eu­ro­pean Union Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA) re­mained in ef­fect for Venezue­lan air­space, Dutch car­ri­er KLM op­er­at­ed flights yes­ter­dat af­ter can­celling ser­vices to Cu­raçao, Aru­ba, Bonaire, Sint Maarten, Trinidad, Guyana and Bar­ba­dos on Sat­ur­day.

KLM said af­fect­ed pas­sen­gers would be re­booked on the next avail­able ser­vice, re­it­er­at­ing that the safe­ty of pas­sen­gers and crew re­mained its top pri­or­i­ty.

Lo­cal and re­gion­al car­ri­ers were large­ly un­af­fect­ed by the FAA re­stric­tions, as nei­ther the air­lines nor their air­craft are reg­is­tered in the Unit­ed States. As a re­sult, in­tra-re­gion­al trav­el con­tin­ued with min­i­mal dis­rup­tion.