Fly Jamaica says backlog cleared

-making administrative changes

After days of flight delays, cancellations and criticisms from stranded passengers, Fly Jamaica says it has been able to resume normal operations after clearing its backlog over the weekend.

Commercial Operations Manager Carl Bowen also said it has already started making administrative changes to ensure that they are better prepared to tackle similar situations.

Giving an update to Stabroek News yesterday, Bowen stated that they are back on schedule and currently have no backlog here or in the USA and Canada.

Bowen had explained in an earlier interview that scheduled and unscheduled maintenance to their planes coupled with a snow storm on the US East Coast and other complications had forced the airline to cancel flights and leave some 200+ passengers in Guyana. At the JFK airport in New York, the snow storm prevented the airline from using their Terminal One slot which also heavily influenced and compounded the problems.

Despite setting up a 24-hour call centre, passengers were still outraged at not being able to get information from the airline and had expressed it on social media and the local media. When asked to comment on how they handled the customers who were enquiring throughout the period of delays, Bowen conceded that call centres and reservation lines were overwhelmed at certain hours which prevented some persons from getting through.

“I can tell you we have about 20 reservation staff and plus auxiliary staff who would help with the local calls as well. We have cell centres overseas in Kingston, two in Brooklyn and one in Toronto and they were all fielding calls but at times it was such a high volume that this was happening and people were not getting through. At times all 20 lines were busy at one time and I think that is where most of the complaints came about,” Bowen said, while refuting claims that the airline was unable to give updates to their customers who had called.

He explained that the airline did explain to their customers what was happening but they might not have “liked the story” they were being told.

“We were able to say what day people were going but people felt the facts were being misrepresented,” he said, while stating that administrative processes will be