Winair launch turns first landing into family reunion

Stand­ing in a cor­ner on the tar­mac of Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, obliv­i­ous to the se­cu­ri­ty and me­dia gath­ered there, an emo­tion­al Karen and Ryan Pin­heiro watched as WM809 touched down just af­ter mid­day on Sun­day.

The Winair ATR 42-500 from Sint Maarten car­ried 45 VIPs, of­fi­cials, and tourists; the start of a twice-week­ly ser­vice be­tween the two is­lands. But for Karen and her hus­band Ryan, it was sim­ply a fam­i­ly re­union. Guid­ing the ATR in­to its fi­nal po­si­tion at Gate 5 were two Trin­bag­o­ni­ans; Cap­tain Michael Awai and the Pin­heiros’ son, First Of­fi­cer Shane.

“I cried, yes, ab­solute­ly! Oh God, I am so proud, you don’t un­der­stand,” Karen told Guardian Me­dia. Though Shane, a Winair pi­lot for the last sev­en years, now lives in Sint Maarten, his moth­er has been his un­of­fi­cial “co-pi­lot” long be­fore that. “I have flown with him be­fore, right here in Pi­ar­co, many years ago, when he was train­ing to get his li­cence. He had me do some stop-and-goes in the night with him, which was a lit­tle daunt­ing be­cause he was on­ly 16 at the time,” she re­called.

For Shane, it is some­thing he has dreamed of since child­hood, when he de­cid­ed that be­ing a pi­lot was what he want­ed to do. “Feels good, you know, it’s one of those buck­et list items to tick off, grow­ing up you al­ways want to fly to where you start­ed, so it feels great to be here,” he said.

At the of­fi­cial wel­come cer­e­mo­ny, of­fi­cials hailed the new flight con­nec­tion as a win for the re­gion. Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty (AATT) Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Hay­den New­ton de­scribed it as the “cul­mi­na­tion of count­less years of courtship, col­lab­o­ra­tion, care­ful plan­ning, and shared in­tent”.

Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our, him­self a com­mer­cial pi­lot, ex­plained the role avi­a­tion plays in Caribbean de­vel­op­ment. “It im­proves ac­cess, sup­ports trade and tourism, and ex­pands trav­el op­tions for our cit­i­zens. For busi­ness­es, it cre­ates new com­mer­cial op­por­tu­ni­ties,” he said. Trade, In­vest­ment, and Tourism Min­is­ter Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj high­light­ed the po­ten­tial for mul­ti-des­ti­na­tion trav­el.

“It sup­ports high­er val­ue vis­i­tor ar­rivals for our fes­ti­vals, con­fer­ences, and events, and strength­ens the flow of trav­ellers be­tween the North­ern Caribbean and the South­ern Caribbean,” he said.

But for Shane, it is sim­pler; it is a chance to come home more reg­u­lar­ly. “I miss the food and cul­ture,” he said with a smile. And for Ryan and Karen, it is a chance to see their son a lit­tle more of­ten. “He’s a very calm in­di­vid­ual,” Karen said, “and it’s just nice to have an­oth­er adult in the home.”