Airport gate merger may catch Tobago travellers off-guard, says Mac Lean

To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Regi­nald Mac Lean is an­tic­i­pat­ing teething prob­lems fol­low­ing the re­moval of the do­mes­tic de­par­ture lounge at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

In a me­dia re­lease on Sat­ur­day, the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty an­nounced the merg­ing of the In­ter­na­tion­al Gates and the To­ba­go Gate, ef­fec­tive April 24.

It said there will be one en­try point for all pas­sen­gers, who will tra­verse a cen­tralised check­point, which has been ex­pand­ed with ad­di­tion­al lanes and ad­vanced screen­ing equip­ment.

The Au­thor­i­ty said this change aligns the air­port with in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards and will im­prove the ef­fi­cien­cy and flow of pas­sen­gers.

It said it is al­so con­sis­tent with the cen­tralised sys­tem in the east­ern ter­mi­nal at the new ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in To­ba­go.

It said pas­sen­gers will al­so be able to ac­cess a wider range of din­ing and du­ty-paid shop­ping op­tions.

Mac Lean said there are pos­i­tives and neg­a­tives to the change but be­lieves it will take time for the pub­lic to get ac­cus­tomed to it.

He said, “Be­cause now you can’t walk in with your bot­tled wa­ter as you used to. Now you have to pay $13-$15 for a bot­tle of wa­ter up­stairs.”

Look­ing at the pos­i­tives, he added, “It’s good in the sense if you are do­ing in­ter­na­tion­al flights it makes it eas­i­er, peo­ple com­ing in­to Port of Spain con­nect­ing in­to To­ba­go don’t have to go back through the process and out­side and all that.”

The Au­thor­i­ty has clar­i­fied that in­ter­na­tion­al pas­sen­gers head­ing to To­ba­go must pass through Cus­toms at the first port of en­try, Pi­ar­co, be­fore tak­ing their con­nect­ing flight to To­ba­go.

It said do­mes­tic pas­sen­gers should ar­rive ap­prox­i­mate­ly two hours be­fore sched­uled de­par­ture, con­sis­tent with the ex­ist­ing Caribbean Air­lines pol­i­cy.

How­ev­er, Mac Lean said, “A lot of peo­ple are gonna get caught off-guard. They gonna ar­rive at the air­port and re­alise they may be late and they gonna miss their flight be­cause (the gate) it’s not as close as it was be­fore, so we wait and see.”