JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Saturday, March 15, 2025

US government extends flight ban to Port-au-Prince, Haiti

by

2 days ago
20250313

The Unit­ed States has ex­tend­ed the flight ban to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, un­til Sep­tem­ber 8 due to wors­en­ing se­cu­ri­ty con­di­tions and es­ca­lat­ing gang vi­o­lence. 

The Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion (FAA) made the de­ci­sion af­ter as­sess­ing on­go­ing threats to civ­il avi­a­tion.

Ini­tial­ly im­posed in No­vem­ber 2024, the re­stric­tion fol­lowed in­ci­dents where three com­mer­cial air­craft were struck by gun­fire while land­ing at Tou­s­saint Lou­ver­ture In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. 

Al­though flights re­sumed at six oth­er Hait­ian air­ports, de­te­ri­o­rat­ing con­di­tions in the cap­i­tal have led to a pro­longed sus­pen­sion. 

The re­stric­tions were set to ex­pire on Wednes­day, but of­fi­cials de­cid­ed the risks were still too high.

Since the ini­tial FAA ban, ma­jor air­lines, in­clud­ing Amer­i­can Air­lines, Spir­it Air­lines, and Jet­Blue, have sus­pend­ed flights to Haiti in­def­i­nite­ly, cit­ing se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns. In a March 6 state­ment, Jet­Blue con­firmed that flights to Port-au-Prince would re­main halt­ed un­til at least June 11, 2025.

“Our top pri­or­i­ty re­mains the safe­ty and well-be­ing of our cus­tomers and crew mem­bers,” a Jet­Blue spokesper­son told The Mi­a­mi Her­ald. “Due to the on­go­ing civ­il un­rest in Haiti, we have made the de­ci­sion to sus­pend all flights to and from the coun­try through at least June 11, 2025.”

With Port-au-Prince’s main air­port ef­fec­tive­ly closed to com­mer­cial flights, Haiti’s gov­ern­ment has shift­ed fo­cus to re­gion­al air­ports to main­tain in­ter­na­tion­al trav­el ac­cess. The Cap-Haï­tien In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port re­mains the on­ly op­tion for di­rect com­mer­cial flights be­tween Haiti and the Unit­ed States, op­er­at­ed by Sun­rise Air­ways and oth­er small car­ri­ers.

In ear­ly March, Hait­ian au­thor­i­ties an­nounced that the An­toine Si­mon Air­port in Les Cayes had com­plet­ed a run­way ex­ten­sion, al­low­ing it to re­ceive in­ter­na­tion­al flights. A sim­i­lar ex­pan­sion at Jacmel’s air­port was fi­nal­ized in Jan­u­ary 2025.

U.S. and Hait­ian of­fi­cials have dis­cussed pos­si­ble steps to re­store com­mer­cial air trav­el safe­ly, but no con­crete time­line has been es­tab­lished. Ear­li­er this month, U.S. Am­bas­sador to Haiti Den­nis Han­k­ins met with Haiti’s Na­tion­al Of­fice of Civ­il Avi­a­tion Di­rec­tor, Régi­nald Guig­nard, to dis­cuss se­cur­ing the perime­ter of Tou­s­saint Lou­ver­ture In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

While the air­port re­mains closed to com­mer­cial traf­fic, it still re­ceives mil­i­tary and diplo­mat­ic flights, in­clud­ing those re­lat­ed to the Kenya-led multi­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mis­sion, that is help­ing Haiti in the fight against gang vi­o­lence.

WASH­ING­TON, Mar. 13, CMC -

CMC/cn/kbb/2025

USHaitiRegional


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored