Airport officials deny a/c breakdown
(CNS): The Cayman Islands Airports Authority has denied that there was any malfunctioning of the air-conditioning system at Owen Roberts this weekend or that any specific health problems with travellers were reported to them, after social media postings painted a picture of chaos at the new facility. Speaking to CNS Monday, a CIAA spokesperson said the air-conditioning was working fine and that there had been no reports of any issues, despite a busy Saturday and some delayed flights.
Officials did confirm that on Saturday six flights arrived late, which had a knock-on impact, leading to a very crowded airport at peak times as passengers waited for their late flights.
But the officials confirmed that the number of travellers passing through ORIA airport Saturday was around 2,260, which is a regular number for its peak travelling day. The airport said it received no formal complaints and no reports of passengers becoming unwell were made, adding that the social media postings were unfounded.
However, people at the terminal Saturday criticized the situation at the facility as they reported having experienced extremely hot conditions, with no seats and what appeared to be an overcrowded terminal, which would send the wrong signal to our overnight visitors. Despite the CIAA denial, social media posters appeared to have witnessed a woman fainting and were quite certain the air-conditioning was not working.
The criticisms come just days after the airport struggled to cope with the deluge of rain last week after its cistern and rain catching system overflowed and flooded the new terminal.
CNS Editor’s note: We would like to apologise for an earlier error where we stated in the article that 22,600 people had passed through the airport, Saturday, when obviously we should have said over 2,600.
“The Cayman Islands Airports Authority has denied that there was any malfunctioning of the air-conditioning system at Owen Roberts this weekend’….per the Compass “Cayman Islands Airports Authority spokeswoman Rhonda Verhoeven said the air conditioning, which was set to 70-72 degrees, was working but acknowledged that the larger than usual number of passengers in the terminal may have pushed the ambient temperature higher.”
So it wasn’t “malfunctioning”, it just didn’t cool the air down to the set temperature! Don’t know about you, but if I set my home ac to 72 and it hits the 80’s in the house I sure as heck would have words to say to my a/c tech if he told me my a/c unit “wasn’t malfunctioning”! Especially if I lived in a newly refurbished building that I had paid over 20% over an already very high budget for!
$60 million dollars later and it appears we need a new airport already……when are we going to stop this madness and wasting of public funds?
Not a waste but built too late to cope with the volume. We are playing catch up and need to continue the expansion.
First impressions of this new rebirth of ORIA show it as a parallel improvement over what we had . The new terminal & departure hall that was built in 1983 showed its shortcomings quite early on, then they extended the departure gate area out to the columns ( that were outside the building ) in about 1990. Gave some more room for departing passengers , but the writing was on the departures board that even then , it was likely going to be inadequate to handle the traffic that Cayman was about to see beyond the 90’s. But for a very small Caribbean island nation , but with a large airline passenger potential as tourism increased, population grew and so on , Cayman did very well with what it had.
The sad part for us all that have to use the airport now, is we will view this recent upgrade as a missed opportunity . It could have been done so much better to have seen it perform well into Caymans next 25+ years of growth in air traffic. Instead , the budget was given that may well have been an inadequate start , meanwhile now we have to be told that +250 / 300 Mil needs to be spent on a cruise ship dock that increasingly..no one wants.
Correct. We need to put more money into the airport rather than the cruise port. Better return on investment.
Caymanians is too easy and foolish going people,they complain among them selves about the policiations and then vote the same controlling ones back in.
If a public facility, auch as our newly upgraded airport, has been damaged, or has regular overflowing capacity issues, what are the Planning safety or Fire safety reprecussions or implications?
I will bet that if a night club had these same damage and overcrowdung issues the owners would be fined and the Planning enforcement unit would suspend the permission until the issues were fixed.
If the Airport knowingly violates its capacity limits, and there is an emergency, believe me the insurance company will not cover the liability and the taxpayers will be made to pay.
More PPM Kirkconnell, PPM Hew and McKeeva Unity greed and incompetence.
For many years the management of the airport (under CAA & CIAA) tried to apply the most obvious solution to peak-hours overcrowding, i.e. “flow control”. Flow control dictates the times and slots that airlines can schedule flights into/out-of an airport. However, the Ministry of Tourism, primarily, aided by the Department of Tourism, have successively and continually discouraged the airport management from implementing flow control measures, instead they direct the airport “don’t discourage the airlines or else they won’t come”. The only time that the airport successfully exercised flow-control directives to an airline was when negotiating with Jet Blue for their first daily flight – somehow MoT & DoT didn’t get wind of that. As a result, CIAA was successful in convincing Jet Blue to arrive earlier than peak.
Essentially,the ORIA terminal is (and was) large enough to accommodate the volume of daily passengers if they were spread evenly throughout the day, but invariably no airport of our size can comfortably accommodate the same volume of pax during three or four peak hours.
Also, there was a management team at ORIA which entered discussions with hotels to alter their check-out times and with attractions to give discounts to visitors who may have to check-out around the same time but who might not have to go the the airport for hours, thus could visit said attractions. That management team was not successful because the DoT did not get on-board and partner with the CIAA to lobby the hotels accordingly. To my knowledge, that initiative died without bearing any positive results.
Flow control is definitely the answer and until CIAA is allowed to implement same, the terminal will experience these overcrowding peak hours. Of course, MoT and DoT would sooner promote more spending of public funds in costly expansions instead of supporting common sense policies and practices which are implemented at airports around the world!!
Yet another defeat snatched from the jaws of victory…it could have been so good. Makes me wonder what that money was actually spent on, ‘cos damn…that’s a lot…
I would bet that there wasn’t a member of the Airport’s management team on site last Saturday (or any weekend for that matter). They’ve created “ambassadors” and a customer service team of junior, inexperienced staff members. These people are assigned the responsibility to be the “managers” on duty on weekends, while the managers and senior managers stay at home (or beach) with their phones off!
So the CIG massively overspent for an outdated 1980s design that does not meet basic spec? Bides well the for cruise doc doesn’t it?
again, a completely new airport should have been built further to east with jet ways and the old facility could have been used for private planes which also seem to be ramping now up as well.
Interesting that the new Bermuda Airport was built further inland and at a higher elevation to protect against rising seas and hurricanes.
But that would’ve made sense
Yes, and it would have made sense for our new terminal to have been elevated so that it will not be flooded. We had our chance but we decided to go cheap. When the next Ivan hits the terminal will be out for a month. STUPID.
Got to give the Bermudans credit, they learned something from a decade of hurricanes.
10:09 And who would maintain it? The same bunch of clowns who screwed ORIA up. It’s a never-ended cycle of incompetence. You’ve raised this issue of jetways again but they don’t fix themselves. If they go tech you need to be sure there are proficient engineers on-site to get them back up again and if you don’t do that the terminal gets grid-locked. Jetways are a mixed blessing. When they work it’s great, when they fail it’s a nightmare.
In Bermuda the locals are being trained in Toronto to handle jetways properly. They work great at other airports in the Caribbean so they can work here with proper training under foreign supervision.
… “under foreign supervision” … you just put your foot in your mouth there at the end.
Why 12:21? Would you assume that Bermudians or Caymanians would already have the expertise to understand the new technology to learn how to operate skybridges? Of course not. There is nothing wrong with being trained by someone who is not Bermudian or Caymanian.
You obviously have a chip on your shoulder.
4:21, hmm, you sure you aren’t an MLA?
kind of sounds like how they think.
You can be sure once they have finished their luxury grade new offices upstairs the CIAA management staff will have plenty of room, ice cold air conditioning, and plenty of time to think of ways to spend their obscene salaries, and of course, no risk of flooding (unless the roof leaks).
The facility and space is to small to handle what the government wants the country to do. The airport needs to move east. Plain and simple.
If problems are not registered until a threshold of filed complaints are achieved, then what is that threshold number, and where/how do they need to be submitted? Is it 25%? Perhaps we need an exit survey and some signage to explain how to register and correlate the fainting spells so our customer experience officers can attune to reality?
One solution is simple… require some of the overseas airlines to schedule flights into GCM at non-peak times. It seems like every time a new flight is approved they are allowed to arrive between 11 am and 4 pm, which further adds to the congestion. Surely the CIAA could work with the hotels to help schedule airlines to arrive/depart at different times of the day.
If we had built a proper upgraded airport, similar to Bermuda, Nassau, Montego Bay and Kingston we would not have to require airlines to plan their schedules based on our airport capacity because we cannot handle the congestion.
Perhaps we should just have less flights coming here from abroad?
Why can we not do things right related to the Airport?
Let’s start with the domestic carrier. The number of passengers that would rely on CAL for an international connection, has to be a very short list. Certainly nobody that flies them regularly. We aren’t competing in that field, let’s stop pretending to try.
So basically, we have spend over 70 million (and counting) on an airport “upgrade” and it is no difference in what we had before??!!! What was the point??!! Other than the vertical distribution of wealth?!!!
This is another fine example of the PPM project management style. Piss Poor Management.
Wait until they do the PORT!! We will have a port that is below the tide line!!!
So well said 7:32. “The vertical distribution of wealth”. So true.
“..22,600 is a regular number.. “ How numbers can be misleading! Dynamic vs. static capacity are not the same. CIAA must know that!
What is, by design, the Dynamic (flow) capacity (in sq.meters per person/ per hour) of the
– wait/circulate area
– bag claim
– check-in queue?
What is the Static (bottle) capacity of these areas?
Does anyone monitor the capacity and restrict access to prevent a stampede during emergency or panic, or ill health effects, etc.
Is there enough doors to evacuate crowds efficiently?
Is there anyone who monitors the situations described in the article, reports to the management in real time and immediately employs measures to mitigate the crisis? Extra water, benches for disabled, elderly, pregnant and passengers with children, outside tents and restrooms?
Why oh why did the CIG not spend a few million dollars more and go with the Canadians for the new airport? We would have had jetways too.
In the end, we are going to end up spending more millions to upgrade the upgrade as we really cannot continue with the overcrowding on the weekends at the airport. We need to figure out the problems with the A/C system fast too.
Bermuda got it right with their new airport.
Bermuda has experience using a new airport?
Tell us, enquiring minds want to know.
Happened to be in Bermuda last month and saw the new terminal. Very impressive. Google: Bermuda Skyport New Terminal for more information.
Because the money wouldn’t have been spent with local businesses- irrespective of whether those local business could do as good a job even at a higher price?
8:41, The vertical integration of wealth. The local businesses in most cases could not do a better job at the airport because they had zero knowledge related to building airports. We now are seeing the problems at the airport with more to come.
We will now pay a big price by going local.
Do you know where you live?
8:09, I am reminded where I live every day I drive by and see and smell Mount Trashmore. Weekends at the airport departure terminal also reminds me where I live. Seriously considering immigrating as I grow more and more disillusioned with this place every day. Sad but true.
What are the duties of the Cayman Fire Marshal? Airport flooding and overcrowding have certainly created unsafe environment for the passengers and staff. Why isn’t he making a statement? If it is not him, than who is responsible for the building and safety codes enforcement? Or none were violated?
“ adding that the social media postings were unfounded…”. after ready this I can say I’ll never believe a word from airport management again. I was there Saturday – you could not move around and you felt like packed sardines, if a fire broke out and you were near the washrooms (furthest from exit doors) – it would take you 15 minutes to evacuate, so incredibly dangerous. If this were a nightclub, the fire Marshall’s would have shut down the nightclub. I guess airports fire codes are less strict than nightclubs?
So the A/C was not made to handle a large case of people. The airports wasn’t able to accommodate people during peak hours and having a delay, only the bare minimum. Isn’t this airport suppoused to be upgraded?
You don’t design something around the expected people going in and out of the airport, you design it around guests coming in x2 or even higher because situations like this occur and it helps the airport long term as there’s an increase in guests as time goes on.
Despite the denials of CIAA it’s very clear the airport was over-crowded that day and the millions spent to “upgrade” the airport couldn’t even accommodate for a situation like this.
I was in the departure lounge Sat afternoon and it was HOT! Maybe the air con wasn’t broken but it certainly wasn’t able to cool the body heat of the over-crowded lounge.
It should be fine though in December-January.
another fine mess by cig civil service….
their incompetence is never ending.
We are no further ahead with the overcrowding conditions in the new airport during weekends, than we were 3 years ago with the old airport.
Where is the accountability for this nonsense? A new modern airport? Are we totally stupid?
My friends were there and confirmed that the A/C system was not working.
What a total screw up again.
Why do Caymanians keep putting up with all this nonsense?
Because caymanians cause it.
Because most Caymanians like to sit in the sidelines and complain but won’t speak out on anything worthwhile. They also like to thumb down any one who will call them out for their cowardice so just check back later to see if it isn’t so!!!!!!!