Cayman Airways Winter Schedule - Daily Direct RT Flights from JFK

[caydiver]

Well I still can’t even figure out Miami. You come in from overseas to connect and your airline tells you your bags are checked through, baggage Hall announcements say everyone has to retrieve their bags. Sometimes they are on the belt and sometimes they are not. Lots of time wasted while you are waiting and hoping. At least the phone apps that tell you the location of your bag are helpful. Most favorite airport so far is Narita in Japan followed by Singapore. Nothing on this side of the world has been anything to write home about in my experience. While I too hope Owen Roberts will be a Nirvana for all truly doubt it can happen. I just look at it as part of travel nowadays and no matter where you are if you have a tight connection you have the overnight option.

 

[Damselfish]

Yeah, noone can figure out Miami. Though it's actually better than it used to be.

Dave Barry once wrote an awesome column on Miami airport.

 

[KathyV]

I hope that the process for interisland travel has been improved with the new airport construction. I understand why they require new arrivals to go through immigration and customs as soon as they land on Grand Cayman, but it would be nice if your bags could be immediately rechecked and if you could easily access the departure lounge without going outside and through security.

The old process made you collect your bags after going through immigration and customs, then you had to go outside, turn and come back inside the ticket hall, recheck your bags, and then go through security just to get to the departure lounge, in order to catch your flight to Brac or Little Cayman. And of course you have to (partially) do it all over again when you fly back from the sister islands to catch your flight home.

If they haven't done anything to fix the inefficient interisland travel process, it will be very disappointing.

Naturally you have to go through immigration and customs at the first point of entry into any country, but many airports have a convenient process for travelers that are still in-transit. You go through immigration and customs, then you wheel your bags to a designated area where they are taken and routed to your next flight. Then you move into the departure area without ever having to go through security again. They could/should create a similar process at GCM.

And when you fly back to GCM from the Cayman sister islands, under the old process, you are mixed in with the new arrivals when you land and routed toward immigration and customs again - even though you haven't left the country. If several planes land around the same time it can be very difficult to fight your way out of the pack to avoid going to Immigration, just to be told that you don't need to be there. Then get your bags, exit and re-enter the airport and go through security again to get to the departure lounge to leave the county. It is not a friendly or efficient procedure in either direction.

It is true that you don't need to go through I&C for domestic flights in most places, but it doesn't always work that way in Cayman! If you are traveling from GC to LC as the final destination, after already going through I&C and Security at GCM, if your flight is scheduled to stop on CB they may make you claim your bags and go through C&I and security all over again on Brac (a shorter and easier process than GCM but still redundant) before you can take the short flight over to LC.

I realize that international flights to and from GCM have the greatest traffic by far, but if they had the chance to fix the seriously broken process for interisland travel and didn't take advantage of the opportunity, that would be very disappointing IMO.

^this^

Yes there are still airports where they don't do this sort of thing as efficiently as one would like. But there are many that do. And airport renovations everywhere seem to take this sort of thing into account anymore. "Some other airports suck so it's ok to suck" is setting the bar kind of low. It's a small airport in a small country that is far from poor. It shouldn't be that hard to do better. Maybe they have always figured the bass-ackwards way they handle (or don't handle) in-transit folks doesn't matter because there are relatively few and they'll come anyway. Really has nothing to do with this.

The message below was recently posted on the TripAdvisor Forum; the OP traveled through GCM on the way to Roatan. He said that their bags were checked all the way through and he didn't have to recheck them. He also says that they had to walk outside to come back into the airport to catch their next flight. They have a long layover time at GCM on the trip home from Roatan and they hope to spend a little time enjoying GC instead of hanging out in the airport.

That sounds good, hopefully they will use a similar process for people traveling on to the sister islands, so you won't have to recheck your bags after going through Immigration and Customs.

"Re: Venturing out during Airport layover
Oct 2, 2018, 10:21 PM

Thanks for the feedback and suggestions! On our way to Roatan, we were able to check our bags through... and the path from arrivals to departures went through the outside of the airport... so we're hoping the return path is the same. ...except this time we'll grab a cab instead of just walking back into the airport. Will let everyone know how it goes!"