Zanderij International Airport, which serves Paramaribo, is progressively recovering part of its pre-pandemic40 connectivity, although still far from 2019 levels. This past weekend, Caribbean Airlines resumed operations to Suriname and JetAir Caribbean landed in that country.
Caribbean Airlines has relaunched interregional routes linking Paramaribo and Curaçao (CUR) from Port of Spain (POS) in Trinidad and Tobago.
Flights to Suriname will be on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from Port of Spain with return flights on Wednesdays and Thursdays, operated on Boeing 737-8 aircraft seating 160 passengers.
«We are delighted to resume regularly scheduled service from Trinidad to Suriname and Curacao. The schedule to these destinations was created to facilitate convenient connections within the region and to other countries in the Caribbean Airlines network,» said Garvin Medera, CEO of Caribbean Airlines.
The return was not without problems as Suriname authorities had earlier this year denied Caribbean Airlines’ request to resume scheduled flights to the country citing the mistreatment of local passengers by the airline when the pandemic began.
A new airline in Suriname
Jetair Caribbean has become the newest airline in Paramaribo by inaugurating service from Hato International Airport (CUR), which serves Willemstad, with twice-weekly flights (Tuesdays and Saturdays) on Fokker 70 aircraft with a capacity for 80 passengers.
«Curaçao is the destination of choice and since the relationship between Suriname and Curaçao goes back a long way, we have chosen to create a flight route here,» said Jetair CEO Robert Maas.
Jetair, which began operating in the Caribbean in 2018, has two Fokker 70s in its fleet. It currently operates from Curaçao to Kingston (KIN), Jamaica; Sint Maarten (SXM); Port-Au-Prince (PAP), Haiti; Santo Domingo (SDQ), Dominican Republic; and Medellin (MDE), Colombia.
Current flights from Suriname
Suriname has been one of the most restrictive countries in Latin America and the Caribbean in the face of the COVID-19 health crisis, having maintained for many months the total closure of its borders. Since the third quarter of 2021 the situation has been changing, allowing greater flexibility in the entry of vaccinated persons.
The situation of the airline industry in Suriname became even tougher when Suriname Airways, the state-owned airline, had to return almost all of its aircraft to the lessors after accumulating large debts.
Thus, the country saw its international air connectivity reduced to a minimum, with only a few flights by American Airlines to Miami, KLM to Amsterdam, Copa from Panama, GOL to Belém; and Fly Allways and Suriname Airways with a few weekly frequencies to destinations in the Caribbean.
