U.S. airlines move to resume Caribbean flights

Re­stric­tions on U.S. air­lines that barred them from op­er­at­ing in sev­er­al Caribbean and South Amer­i­can air­spaces at any al­ti­tude have been lift­ed. The move comes a day af­ter the U.S. Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion is­sued mul­ti­ple No­tices to Air­men (NO­TAMs for parts of the Cu­ra­cao, Mai­que­tia, Pi­ar­co and San Juan Flight In­for­ma­tion Re­gions due to what the agency called “safe­ty of flight risks as­so­ci­at­ed with on­go­ing mil­i­tary ac­tiv­i­ty” in Venezuela.

In a late evening post to X, for­mer­ly known as 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 up­date their sched­ules.

In an im­me­di­ate state­ment to Guardian Me­dia on Sat­ur­day, Unit­ed Air­lines said it was prepar­ing to re­sume flights to the Caribbean, start­ing with de­par­tures to San Juan, Puer­to Ri­co. Puer­to Ri­co’s Luis Muñoz Marín In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, one of the busiest in the Caribbean, record­ed more than 400 can­cel­la­tions on Sat­ur­day, ac­cord­ing to da­ta from flight track­ing web­site FlightAware.com. Unit­ed ex­pects to op­er­ate most sched­uled flights on Sun­day and plans to add ad­di­tion­al ser­vices to as­sist af­fect­ed cus­tomers. The air­line urged pas­sen­gers to check their flight sta­tus and use the waiv­er in ef­fect where nec­es­sary.

Sim­i­lar­ly, New York based car­ri­er Jet­Blue is work­ing to re­sume flights and may add ex­tra ser­vices. In a me­dia state­ment, the air­line apol­o­gised to cus­tomers and said, “We un­der­stand this is a busy trav­el week­end for many cus­tomers, and we’re do­ing every­thing pos­si­ble to sup­port those af­fect­ed by the dis­rup­tion.” The air­line al­so en­cour­aged pas­sen­gers to check their flight sta­tus on­line or through the Jet­Blue app. Ac­cord­ing to Jet­Blue, about 215 flights were can­celled due to U.S. mil­i­tary ac­tion.

Al­though a Con­flict Zone In­for­ma­tion Bul­letin is­sued by the Eu­ro­pean Union Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency re­mains in ef­fect for Venezue­lan air­space, Dutch car­ri­er KLM de­cid­ed to op­er­ate flights on Sun­day af­ter can­celling ser­vices to Cu­ra­cao, Aru­ba, Bonaire, Sint Maarten, Trinidad, Guyana and Bar­ba­dos on Sat­ur­day. The air­line said it will re­book af­fect­ed pas­sen­gers on the next avail­able ser­vice, re­it­er­at­ing that the safe­ty of pas­sen­gers and em­ploy­ees re­mains its top pri­or­i­ty.

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