GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands – Tourism Minister Kenneth Bryan says that British Airways will be resuming its regular flights to the territory from September 9, when the territory has a soft reopening of its borders for commercial flights.
Speaking at a recent meeting of the Cayman Islands Tourism Association meeting, Bryan said that due to growing demand, the airline would be putting on more flights.
Following the closure of the territory’s border closure, British Airways flights between Heathrow and the Owen Roberts International Airport were reduced to repatriation flights operating once every two weeks.
According to the Tourism Minister, while British Airways and Cayman Airways are currently the only airlines allowed to fly into the country, upon reopening in September other airlines will be given permission to land here.
“This will lead to a small growth in tourism numbers,” he said. “This soft reopening can be used as a test period to iron out any necessary kinks in Phase 4”, which starts on October 14, when travelers with securely verified vaccinations will no longer be required to quarantine upon arrival.”
The Tourism Minister said that during a recent meeting at which airlines, including Jet Blue, American Airlines, Delta and British Airways, were represented, the government had asked if there was anything it could do to help facilitate a return to normal operations and were told that the airlines would react to market demands.
As part of Cayman’s reopening plan – September 9 is earmarked as the ‘Phase 3’ date from when a limited number of tourists will be welcomed back to the island on commercial flights.
Bryan said some of the airlines had indicated that they may use the five-week period between Phases 3 and 4 to operate a very limited number of flights, – “to give themselves a chance to iron out the kinks as well”.
The tourism minister also said that Cayman Airways was already operating regular flights to Jamaica, and there were indications that flights to and from Canada would return to a level of normalcy.
Bryan said he had met with the Cayman Islands Airports Authority and the Cayman Islands Airport Operators Committee to discuss preparations for the soft reopening, and a task force had been set up to deal with the reintroduction of commercial flights in the Open Skies agreement with airlines.
