AIRPORT CHAOS

Phil and Roslyn flew in from Fort Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan today and they sure got a quick introduction to life in Haiti! Their Continental flight was late and instead of arriving at 1:05pm, it arrived at 2:18pm. The bad part about landing late meant they arrived when a few other flights had already arrived resulting in a massive jam of people all going through arrival at the same time. It took them 3 hours to collect their baggage. American Airlines has priority on the belts, so the poor Continental passengers got stuck in a holding pattern at the luggage belt. With all the people arriving and all the flights at the same time resulted in massive traffic at the airport. I was worried about being late as we were stuck in the airport traffic jam and told Amos to sit in traffic while I went the rest of the way to the airport on foot. It was a good walk. The refuge camps are starting to be cleared out by the airport. One large section is empty. The move was recent because there is still quite a bit of debris on the site. I was able to get some photos of it and will post it to the blog when I have time. I was able to get pretty close to the barrier at the waiting area but sort of had to box out this one Haitian man who tried to push his way to the front. All those basketball box out drills sure do come handy in crowds :) He didn't like it and got angry. There were a few incidents of people trying to find out why the people they were waiting for never came out. People were getting frustrated out in the waiting area. Pray that the airport is expanded. With all the extra airline companies flying to Haiti the airport arrival area can not cope with the increased passenger traffic. The guys never got to the parking lot. The police told them to forget about trying to get the parking area and they left Kimosabee at the side of the road. Repairing the airport structure is currently being done but they have got to find a way of enlarging the arrival area and parking. If anyone wants to travel to Haiti my advice would be to arrive before noon or arrive on the last flights of the day. Flight times of 1-3pm are bottleneck times for the arrival area and the parking lot. I'll post articles and photos tomorrow.