Pas­sen­gers both out­ward and in­ward-bound wel­comed spe­cial flights from Caribbean Air­lines yes­ter­day, say­ing these mea­sures have brought much-need­ed re­lief to them­selves and their fam­i­lies as coun­tries around the world con­tin­ue to shut their bor­ders to pre­vent those in­fect­ed with COVID-19 from en­ter­ing their re­spec­tive coun­tries.

Even more ec­sta­t­ic were some 80 T&T na­tion­als who re­turned from Guyana on flight BW3462 just be­fore noon, as they beat yes­ter­day’s mid­night dead­line in which the coun­try’s bor­ders by air and sea were closed to all pas­sen­gers.

The sur­prise an­nounce­ment of the bor­der clo­sure on Sat­ur­day by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young had height­ened the anx­i­ety of na­tion­als abroad who were try­ing des­per­ate­ly to get home.

Guyana closed its bor­ders last week for 14 days.

Lo­cals who re­turned from Guyana yes­ter­day were screened by health of­fi­cials and af­ter be­ing giv­en the all-clear were or­dered to spend 14 days in self-quar­an­tine.

While some told Guardian Me­dia they did not want to share their ex­pe­ri­ences be­cause of fear of be­ing dis­crim­i­nat­ed by fel­low em­ploy­ees or even mem­bers of their re­spec­tive com­mu­ni­ties, oth­ers spoke briefly about their time in Guyana and the wait to re­turn home.

Thomas Chanona, the own­er of Kee-Chanona Ltd, a re­gion­al build­ing con­trac­tor, heaped praised on CAL as he ex­pressed his re­lief at be­ing on na­tive soil once again.

Re­count­ing his ex­pe­ri­ence in neigh­bour­ing Guyana, Chanona said, “The Guyanese is aware of it and they are still min­gling a lot. Their cul­ture is mar­ket and it is risky. I am just glad to be home and even more grate­ful to Caribbean Air­lines.

“Men­tal­ly, I am fine be­cause it’s about be­ing aware of what you have to do, like wash­ing your hands and keep­ing your dis­tance.

“We work in con­struc­tion, which presents some chal­lenges be­cause it is a very in­ter­ac­tive thing, which is work­ing in close quar­ters with peo­ple but we were al­so sani­tis­ing our work­places and keep­ing the team aware of their per­son­al hy­giene. The con­cern was if the world is go­ing to be on lock­down we might be away for a long pe­ri­od.”

An­oth­er pas­sen­ger, who iden­ti­fied him­self on­ly as Chris and who al­so re­turned from Guyana, said he was hap­py to be re­unit­ed with his loved ones, es­pe­cial­ly his preg­nant fi­ancé.

“I am very re­lieved. It’s good to be back home,” Chris said, while prais­ing the lo­cal au­thor­i­ties for en­sur­ing mea­sures were im­ple­ment­ed from the on­set.

“I ac­tu­al­ly think Trinidad is do­ing a good job. A lot of things on lock­down. I think Guyana still needs to lock cer­tain things down,” Chris said.

“A lot of things are pret­ty much like nor­mal. We had ac­cess to wa­ter and food, the mar­ket is still open. I don’t think they (Guyana) are prac­tis­ing the sep­a­ra­tion (so­cial dis­tanc­ing) but we have a lot more cas­es than them so we’ll see.”

Dionne Ligoure, head of Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions at CAL, said from very ear­ly yes­ter­day the air­line mount­ed spe­cial flights in and out to sev­er­al des­ti­na­tions, in­clud­ing those to Mi­a­mi, New York and Toron­to.

In break­ing down the fig­ures, Ligoure said there were 115 pas­sen­gers to Mi­a­mi who board­ed BW484; 143 pas­sen­gers to New York who board­ed BW524 and 145 pas­sen­gers to Toron­to on BW600.

“This was to en­sure that those na­tion­als who were abroad and who need­ed to re­turn home could do so in a time­ly man­ner be­fore the close of in­ter­na­tion­al flights to Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Ligoure ex­plained.

She said all the flights were full, not­ing that the flight to Toron­to com­prised both na­tion­als and per­ma­nent res­i­dents of Cana­da.

“The US flight may have been a mix of na­tion­als, res­i­dents and cit­i­zens be­cause there is no re­stric­tion from this part of the world in­to the US and like­wise in­to Mi­a­mi,” Ligoure not­ed.

“That flight from Guyana, based on the trav­el re­stric­tions to Guyana, that flight fer­ried to Guyana and came back to Trinidad. The Guyanese gov­ern­ment is al­low­ing per­sons to leave Guyana and our re­stric­tions is that on­ly na­tion­als and per­ma­nent res­i­dents can land in T&T.”

She added CAL had a “very small win­dow” to put all strate­gies in place but em­pha­sised that the air­line will con­tin­ue to work close­ly with the pub­lic health au­thor­i­ties to en­sure the safe­ty and well-be­ing of its cus­tomers and crew.

“We have very strict on­board pro­to­cols. All per­sons trav­el­ling must wear masks and our op­er­at­ing crews have to use masks and gloves as well,” Ligoure added.

Mean­while, the British Am­bas­sador to this coun­try, Tim Stew, ad­vised his na­tion­als yes­ter­day that British Air­ways and Vir­gin At­lantic had arranged flights to en­sure they re­turn home to the UK.

He said some BA flights will leave on March 23, 24 and 26 af­ter re­ceiv­ing a spe­cial con­ces­sion from this coun­try’s Gov­ern­ment to do so.