QCOSTARICA – After the restoration of normal operations at the Juan Santamaria (San Jose) airport, yesterday at noon, activity today was more than the usual Saturday volume with an increase of more than 30%, according to the Costa Rica Tourism Board (Instituto Costarricense de Turismo – ICT).
Staff at Aeris Holding, the airport manager, reported many more travellers than normal, but the coordination with airlines, the immigration service (Dirección de Migración) and airport police (Policía Aeroportuaria) and traffic police (Policía de Tránsito) ensured a fluid movement.
Airport operations was disrupted Thursday afternoon following eruptions of the Turrialba volcano, causing the country’s largest international airport to shut down for almost 20 hours.
This Saturday the airport handled more than 120 flights, including passenger and cargo flights, international and local.
Juan Belliard, director operations, said a number of airlines, including Air Canada, Aeromexico, Avianca, Copa and American Airlines, sent widebody aircraft with more passenger capacity to handle the volume.
“activity today was more than the usual Saturday volume with an increase of more than 30%” – that’s an no brainer increase even for me who’s not good at math.
Not only was the airport closed on Thursday & part of Friday – the decision to re-open it on Friday was always pending so 3 separate people I spoke with that were heading to CR from the U.S. ALL were waiting out on the tarmac both Thursday & Friday & after an hour or more of waiting on the plane – were sent back in & forced to stay the night again & they were not given an option to fly until Saturday.
Like I had question before, they all said they would gladly have flown into Liberia & hire drivers or a rental car to get them to SJ vs wasting their time & spending their $$ in the States as they were forced to do.