GAIA BRACES FOR WINTER SEASON

The busiest day of the year for the Grantley Adams International Airport (GAIA) occurred on Thursday, as officials are brace themselves for a busy winter season.

During a tour for media personnel last week, Chief Executive Officer of GAIA Inc. Hadley Bourne, said that peak for the season has arrived ahead of schedule this year, which is a good sign for the island.

“It’s early days in the winter season. Normally, we would not reach our peak capacity in terms of the busy day [until] December. This is an indication of what the winter season and tourist season is looking like for Barbados for this year.

“We have plans in place to repurpose the Concord facility to assist in those peak traffic [times], but that would happen maybe later in December.”

He further added.

“Why we see it as a challenge is the timing; the air-to-sea arrivals and departures would then also come invariably around the same time as our regular commercial traffic. So it puts an operational challenge on our infrastructure. We were designed to handle between 1 400 and 1 600 passengers an hour, and at peak, I think we will be roughly around 3 000 or so. That is why for us it is something we [are monitoring] and would have put various plans in place with the stakeholders.”