Warning for pax heading to St Lucia on BA
Just thought I would let ppruners know that one month after hurricane Tomas hit the island BA is still routing the flight from St Lucia (UVF) through Trinidad. Their webpage says that St Lucia flights have returned to normal but I was emailed (& texted) that I had to check in just over 2 hrs earlier than the original schedule and would arrive in LGW 30 mins later.
This is due to the fact that BA flies "shuttles" between 2 islands (in this case Trinidad and St Lucia). Normally the ex London crew stay in St Lucia in a hotel in the south and a new crew come from the hotel and just go up and down to POS then another crew comes from the hotel and flies back to London.
As the south of the island sill has no water (at least not regular pipe born supply) and the hotel has no tanks the crew are being overnighted in Port of Spain. I found it a bit strange as the traffic to the city in POS is always bad so they win only probably 30 mins compared to overnighting the crew in the north of St Lucia where there are plenty of hotels and all is back to normal. Plus the crew are not v happy in POS - more expensive etc etc and I really was not impressed with the level of service/presence in the cabin. Both sets (UVF-POS/POS-LGW were pretty grumpy) not what you expect from Gatwick crew....
Makes for a long day for the pax as many have onward connections. Virgin is flying as normal and flight time is 8.05 instead of 10.30 with BA!!
If you are going to St Lucia before January and have a choice I'd recommend you go Virgin!
Last edited by piton; 2nd Dec 2010 at 15:20.