Persons who purchased tickets with airlines to travel to Guyana over the next few weeks are being advised by the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) that no approval has been granted for commercial flights to land here.
Chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority, Lieutenant Colonel (Ret’d) Larry London on Saturday said that the GCAA received reports that persons purchased tickets with JetBlue and American Airlines to travel to Guyana during the month of July.
He said those persons should ask for their monies back because no commercial flights have been approved for July and there is no guarantee at this time that there will be commercial flights in August.
“If you are invited to buy tickets on any carrier I want you to know that they are not coming because they have not been approved to come,” London told a virtual press briefing.
He said special permission was granted for WestJet and Eastern Airlines to bring home repatriating Guyanese from Toronto and the United States of America, respectively.
To get on those flights, persons are required to apply to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and are then granted approval once they meet the requirements.
They would also need to be tested for Coronavirus and have negative results.
“Please don’t buy tickets from carriers until we say it’s safe to do so,” he added.
Several airlines have been advertising flights to Guyana and persons have purchased those tickets only to find out later that the flights have been cancelled.
With this new information coming from the GCAA it means that those flights were advertised and tickets sold by the airline without approval being granted by the Guyanese authorities.
It is not still clear when commercial flights will be able to land but the GCAA expects that “limited” approval will be granted in August.
Limited approval for citizens, permanent residents and other categories of persons was intended to commence this week but that had to be pushed back with Guyana’s steady increase in COVID-19 cases.
