Airlines canceled hundreds of flights to Puerto Rico and other Caribbean destinations on Saturday, leaving thousands of passengers without plans at the end of the New Year holiday period after the Federal Aviation Administration instructed commercial aircraft to evade airspace in parts of the region following U.S. strikes on Venezuela.
President Donald Trump indicated on Saturday that the strikes led to the capture of the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife.
According to FlightAware, there were almost 400 flights to and from Puerto Rico’s Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport, close to 60 percent of the day’s schedule. Therefore, fifteen flights from San Juan were listed as canceled for Sunday.
Almost 91 flights, more than half of Saturday’s flights to and from Aruba’s Queen Beatrix International Airport, were canceled on Saturday.
In a post on X (formerly known as Twitter), U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy stated that “When appropriate, these airspace restrictions will be lifted.”
The airlines affected by the flight restrictions were American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines, JetBlue Airways, United Airlines, and Frontier Airlines.
Carriers waived fare difference and change fees to customers who were impacted by the airspace closures, provided that those customers changed their flights to later in the month. Airlines included more than a dozen airports in the region in their waivers.
JetBlue, which operates a significant route to the Caribbean, claimed it canceled approximately 215 flights “due to airspace closures across the Caribbean related to military activity.”
However, the airline reported that it was not restricted by governmental restrictions on flights to the Dominican Republic and Jamaica. According to American Airlines, it canceled all its flights to the Eastern Caribbean on Saturday.
There were also warnings issued by Dutch carrier KLM to travelers about disruptions due to the airspace restrictions, which could disrupt flights to Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao, and others.
Such broad restrictions are usually temporary, but some flight crews were trapped as well, so airlines might require an extended period in the post-flight bans to reposition the workforce. The largest U.S. airlines had not served Venezuela directly for years.
America was the last of the major U.S. carriers to cancel flights to the country in 2019. Military operations and other safety considerations have, over the years, and continue to cause airspace closures, and airlines have had to fly longer routes to avoid the restricted airspace or even halt service in the last few years, including in Russia and Ukraine, Israel, and Iran.
