Miami to Cayman Brac flight announced!

[keyshunter]

AFAIK, since they will be flying one of their 737's from Miami to the Brac, baggage delays, other than lost baggage, etc, should not be problem. Actually there are very few serious baggage delays even when flying to the Brac on the Twin Otters from Grand Cayman, since, if one's baggage does not fit on the Twin Otters, it is sent over on the evening jet flight.

BTW, I was told that although the Miami-Brac flight is direct, all return flights are routed through Grand Cayman.

 

[-hh]

AFAIK, since they will be flying one of their 737's from Miami to the Brac, baggage delays, other than lost baggage, etc, should not be problem. Actually there are very few serious baggage delays even when flying to the Brac on the Twin Otters from Grand Cayman, since, if one's baggage does not fit on the Twin Otters, it is sent over on the evening jet flight.

That's fine for getting there, but not to get home ... particularly since there's only a Cayman Airways desk @ CYB, so you're generally not going to be able to check your baggage all the way through ...

End even if you get it tagged, if your baggage misses the ~10AM Express, there's not another flight from the Brac to Grand Cayman for it to be put on to make your 1-2pm USA-bound flight on Continental, Delta, USAir, etc...

BTW, I was told that although the Miami-Brac flight is direct, all return flights are routed through Grand Cayman.

Hadn't heard this, but I did hear last week that the locals think of it as being pretty futile, since the flight over & return doesn't give them any time to go shopping in Miami.

AFAIC, this is looking more and more like YA effectively empty gesture that won't make any real difference for the Brac.


-hh

 

[AggieDiver]

I suspect the reason why all the returning flights go through GCM has to do with having the personnel to xray and search bags for customs purposes to meet flight requirements going to the US. The personnel at CYB are pretty limited.

As was said above, most of the baggage issues were with twin otter flights. If you book on the 737 flights, you will not have any problems. That doesn't help much going to Little Cayman, but I prefer to accept the occasional baggage problem going to Little Cayman if it means they aren't flying in hundreds of people every couple of days.

 

[keyshunter]

I was a bit surprised that the return is going through Grand. I know that the terminal has security for people and carryons. In fact there is a new game which I learned in March when flying Grand-Brac-LC. If the Otter needs to take on fuel at the Brac, all passengers must exit the plane until fueling is completed. For years, all we did was go into the departure lounge and wait. Now everyone must go around and through security before entering the departure lounge. Since I never turn loose of my small carryon which contains my passport, regulator , DC, etc., it had to go through x-ray and was flagged for manual inspection. The young man said "Oh, it's a regulator"...DUH. The reason for the return through Grand might be that the Brac is not set up to x-ray checked baggage. I'll ask when I am there next month.

 

[AggieDiver]

Yeah, xraying checked bags was what I meant...not carryons. I believe the rule from TSA is that all checked bags on US bound flights must either be inspected by hand or xrayed. They probably don't have the personnel or equipment on CYB to do that in a timely manner.