Check your tickets to little and brac. Cayman Airways has switched things around. Flights, flight times, and planes. In one case, they have a plane in the air in two different places at the same time. Somebody is not sure what is going on.
Cayman Airways...not again
- Thread starter divezonescuba
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jdcpa
Contributor
I got an email Friday night that changes my connections to one of the Sister Islands. It seems they have cancelled the 5:10 PM flight out of Grand Cayman on Express.
The flight change requires I become a time traveler!!
I land in Grand Cayman at 4:10 PM. The flight change shows I depart Grand Cayman at 2:30 PM on the same day, an hour and forty minutes before I land in Grand Cayman.
I am not sure how I can leave an hour and forty minutes before I arrive, but that is how they have me scheduled.
I have nine tickets for my family members and me, all business class, that are affected by this time traveling change.
I contacted them and their answer was they could not do anything, there were too many tickets affected. They indicated they would have to meet to figure out what to to do with my situation.
While I wait for them to meet, they will be resolving other passengers with the same issues and reducing the options for me.
I think it is pretty funny that they are doing this.Somewhere in their system it seems there should be a fail safe that won't allow your booking to leave before you arrive.
I realize that I have nine passengers that have screwed up itineraries and we are all stranded at this point. I wonder if our failure to show up for a flight that departs an hour and forty minutes before our arrival will cause the cancellation of the return legs of the trip!! LOL!!
It will get worked out, we will get there. The wild ride to get to that point and the amount of inconvenience to get there is the question at this point.
Oh, what a thrill this will be!!
File this under "You can't make this stuff up!!"
I attached a redacted portion of the email I received below. Not sure if it will open for you, not real computer savvy.
The flight change requires I become a time traveler!!
I land in Grand Cayman at 4:10 PM. The flight change shows I depart Grand Cayman at 2:30 PM on the same day, an hour and forty minutes before I land in Grand Cayman.
I am not sure how I can leave an hour and forty minutes before I arrive, but that is how they have me scheduled.
I have nine tickets for my family members and me, all business class, that are affected by this time traveling change.
I contacted them and their answer was they could not do anything, there were too many tickets affected. They indicated they would have to meet to figure out what to to do with my situation.
While I wait for them to meet, they will be resolving other passengers with the same issues and reducing the options for me.
I think it is pretty funny that they are doing this.Somewhere in their system it seems there should be a fail safe that won't allow your booking to leave before you arrive.
I realize that I have nine passengers that have screwed up itineraries and we are all stranded at this point. I wonder if our failure to show up for a flight that departs an hour and forty minutes before our arrival will cause the cancellation of the return legs of the trip!! LOL!!
It will get worked out, we will get there. The wild ride to get to that point and the amount of inconvenience to get there is the question at this point.
Oh, what a thrill this will be!!
File this under "You can't make this stuff up!!"
I attached a redacted portion of the email I received below. Not sure if it will open for you, not real computer savvy.
My friend and I had the same issue. Are you going to Little Cayman via Tampa? My friend is on that flight and I am flying from NY on AA. Neither of us could make the 2:30 flight they put us on. I spoke to Cayman Airways and was told that the flight was cancelled and they would put up my friend in a hotel since she was flying Cayman all the way.
Then mysteriously I received another confirmation for a 5PM flight to Little Cayman. Again I called and was told that no they had not cancelled it, they just changed the time slightly and we are both definitely confirmed on the 5 PM flight to Little Cayman. This was also confirmed by my friend's travel agent.
You might want to call Cayman Airways. I am still a bit skeptical and hope we don't end up spending the night in Grand Cayman and missing the first day of our trip. Or maybe they reinstated the flight because of all our hassles. Good luck!
Then mysteriously I received another confirmation for a 5PM flight to Little Cayman. Again I called and was told that no they had not cancelled it, they just changed the time slightly and we are both definitely confirmed on the 5 PM flight to Little Cayman. This was also confirmed by my friend's travel agent.
You might want to call Cayman Airways. I am still a bit skeptical and hope we don't end up spending the night in Grand Cayman and missing the first day of our trip. Or maybe they reinstated the flight because of all our hassles. Good luck!
AggieDiver
Contributor
We experienced this a few years ago when they were putting the Saab into service flying from the Brac to GC. When they started changing over the flights, apparently they cancelled the old flights first, then started adding in the new ones and moving people onto them. In the meantime, people were scrambling because the system sent them cancellation notices and started trying to rebook them on odd flight combinations that wouldn't work. When they started adding in the new flights, people jumped to rebook before Cayman could get everybody back on the flights they were originally supposed to be on. Most folks eventually got back onto combinations that worked, but it seemed like mass confusion for a while until Cayman Airways got themselves sorted out. This sounds like the same kind of issue. It sounds like they were changing the 5:10pm flight to a 5:00pm flight and instead of adding the new flight first, then migrating the 5:10pm passengers over, they first cancelled the 5:10pm and the system tried to automatically rebook the affected passengers. If they would just add the new flights first, they could avoid these kinds of problems...
I was just notified that they've pushed my departure flight from LC to GC to a bit later, not a huge deal but it makes the connection for my flight home a bit tighter - hopefully they will depart LC on time and the security lines at GCM won't be too long!
It sounds like you need to buy a Flux Capacitor!
I try not to get too worked up by all the flight changes - and not just with Cayman Airways - I used to get very stressed out about a change but then it would suddenly change again!
But our departure date is getting closer, so I am starting to get a little worried again!
Doctorfish
Contributor
I've had issues with them before moving flights up so as to make connections impossible or just cancelling.. The response I've always had when I called their service line has been "too bad". For 9 passengers they should just do an extra flight with the Otter, but I would not hold my breath. Will island air still run charters? For 9 people, might be a reasonable option.
I've had some pretty interesting experiences with island air transportation, remember ALM (Ah, the luggage, man!) that used to service Bonaire? Once they cancelled our flight and booked us in the same hotel room with a group of German smokers!
We also made 2 trips to Curacao one night - and we weren't even supposed to stop on Curacao at all, and another time we visited Venezuela by surprise!
Once we were flying back to Nassau from one of the Bahamas out-islands on Bahamas Air and discovered that although they booked people on flights advertised as leaving every half-hour, in reality they just made everyone wait for hours until enough people had showed up to fill one plane! "What about our connections?" we asked, the answer "Don't worry!"
And when we were flying to San Salvador in the Bahamas, they weighed each person and their luggage before boarding, to decide who could go and who had to wait for the next flight.
But I think my favorite was flying to Roatan on the old TACA airline, they made everyone pick out one bag that we wanted to arrive with us on the same plane - the others "would arrive some time later." It was tough decision!
We also made 2 trips to Curacao one night - and we weren't even supposed to stop on Curacao at all, and another time we visited Venezuela by surprise!
Once we were flying back to Nassau from one of the Bahamas out-islands on Bahamas Air and discovered that although they booked people on flights advertised as leaving every half-hour, in reality they just made everyone wait for hours until enough people had showed up to fill one plane! "What about our connections?" we asked, the answer "Don't worry!"
And when we were flying to San Salvador in the Bahamas, they weighed each person and their luggage before boarding, to decide who could go and who had to wait for the next flight.
But I think my favorite was flying to Roatan on the old TACA airline, they made everyone pick out one bag that we wanted to arrive with us on the same plane - the others "would arrive some time later." It was tough decision!
AggieDiver
Contributor
Part of the problem is that the Little Cayman airport is not setup for night landings. So the later in the year it gets, the closer that 5 pm flight gets to being too dark to land. I wouldn't be surprised if the 5:10pm to 5:00pm was to try to give them enough window to get the flight into LC and back out before darkness falls.
AggieDiver
Contributor
They don't call TACA "take a chance airways" for nothing. I still remember flying on their plane from Belize City to Roatan. That thing was a dead ringer for the Winnebago shaped spaceship from the movie Spaceballs. And yes, they got our extra bag to us eventually. Heck, they were quicker to get us our extra bag than United was 3 weeks ago.
Your Bahamas story sounds like Tropic Air flying to Ambergris Caye from Belize City. We had a group of 12 on a trip. The guy kept coming over and asking "you have 11 right? We would say, "no 12". He would say "just a minute" and take a smaller group to board a plane. 20 or 30 minutes later he would come back over and say "you have 11 right?" We would say "no 12". He would say "Just a minute" and go put some other people on a plane. Finally, after we had waited for about 2.5-3 hours and done the "11? no 12" game at least 3 times, he came back "11? no 12" game one more time, then ran outside. Finally he came back and said "follow me", then led us out to the plane. He grabbed one guy from the group and said "no, you come around this side" and led him over to climb into the copilot's seat. The pilot looked extremely unhappy with that series of events, but he got us there safely.
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