Dominican Republic

[FerrypilotDK]

Hello"locals,"

Has anyone been to Porto Plata? We are looking at a fuel/tech stop, but I know 0 about the country. I have always avoided DR and Haiti, as I thought of them as being slow, crime infested if an overnight and still suffering from storm damage with infrastructure problems.

But Ops is sort of pushing in that direction, so ......... any thoughts? Experience, recent if possible.

ciao

[The Dominican]

Get in touch with these folks......!

Santo Domingo / SDQ - MDSD | Servair.com.do (http://www.servair.com.do/en/p/airports/sdq-mdsd)

They offer A/C services at all the major airports in the Dominican Republic including PUERTO PLATA, it is a very easy process and they do a pretty good job.

Now on a personal note, don't compare the DR with Haiti just because we share the same territory, experience it for yourself before you talk out your ass:=

[caber]

I fly into Puerto Plata on a regular basis with my airline, so I can't speak for the ga services but the airline service is excellent and the airport very easy to operate from. Do not try to compare anything in the DR to anything in Haiti, the difference is night and day.

[FerrypilotDK]

Well folks, now that we have landed there, here is an update. The tower people are not the cleverest people, I might say. We landed and were just about to exit the runway and taxi to the ramp, when they gave push-back to an Airbus, which then blocked the taxiway to the ramp. So we had to sit there while they got themselves started. It ould be a "big airplane nneds to keep schedule, small airplane can wait" situation in the tower mind, but there were two waiting for departure anyway, so it wasn`t like Airbus was going anywhere soon.

The coordination between the tower and the handling was not the best, as we were instructed to taxi ´round the back to GA parking. On the handling freq, we knew that the fuel truck was standing by for a quick turn on the ramp to our left. The two had not spoken it seems.

The service from the ground then was really quite good, except that the passengers were not permitted to remain on board during refueling. As it turned out, this was a bit of a ruse, to get them away from the cabin, so that they could do a "security check" of the interior, including a drug/bomb dog. They probably know from previous that the pax do not want a dog inside.

Anyway, on the bright side, the fuel was inexpensive and we took off 30 minutes after landing, so the service all in all was good, inexpensive and fast, even with the initial misunderstandings and delays.

[FerrypilotDK]

.......I said "in my mind," as I had nothing to compare to, no first hand knowledge at all. So to all the DR people, I won´t ever mix up the two again!

All in all, as I wrote above, it was a good tech stop. I might even be tempted to go there for a holiday, if they don-t have the Haiti issues and the people past the terminal are as friendly as the handling people were.....which was tops.