The Virgin Islands, with its unbounded natural beauty and kind and generous citizenry, has become the only vacation destination my family has chosen to visit for nearly two decades. We closely followed the unfathomable devastation Hurricane Irma unleashed (a VI resident was staying with us when it made landfall) and support the VI and the resilient, proud nation during the rebuilding process.

We felt that it was of great importance to return to the VI as soon as possible after the storm. In fact, we skipped a vacation last year to wait to return.

I wrote this letter from the San Juan airport while travelling home from a typically amazing 12-day stay at Guavaberry Spring Bay on Virgin Gorda. We supported many local restaurants, businesses and shops. At every step, we were greeted with love and generosity, which are abundant among VI residents. We are grateful to everyone that we had the pleasure to meet again, and look forward to returning to the VI.

 

Airline troubles

Relative to many other difficulties in life, the trouble I am writing you about is trivial. I am only writing because I am concerned that the type of service I experienced today may be of impact to the needed growth of VI tourism.

To minimise seasickness and maximise time spent in the VI, I chose to book flights to travel directly to Virgin Gorda. They were more expensive than our roundtrip flights between New Jersey and San Juan. Two days before the end of my stay, I was notified that I would be flying out of Beef Island instead of Virgin Gorda with no reduction in fare.

I arrived in Tortola and checked in. The gate agent was fabulous. However, after clearing security, the agent came in to notify me that the airline would not be responsible for making my connection time.

A flight was diverted to transport me from Tortola to St. Thomas. Upon arrival in St. Thomas after clearing customs, a very helpful crew literally jogged me around the airport to a solo San Juan flight. In San Juan I was held up at Global Entry at the US border because my solo flight had no flight number. After clearing, the pilot and ground crew took every shortcut possible to get me to TSA. The ground crew member literally ran to my gate hoping to hold my flight to New Jersey. I cleared TSA with PreCheck and ran to the gate — only to find that my flight had left.

 

Missing work

No employee, pilot, ground crew or otherwise is at any fault in this story: They all went above and beyond the call of duty. At the time of writing, I am sitting in the airport to take a 2 a.m. red eye home instead of a 2 p.m. flight, and both my wife and I will miss work tomorrow.

I would not be concerned or writing you if this seemed to be an isolated event. Judging from the reactions of passengers, crewmembers, and airport officials in three airports, this seems to be a daily occurrence. I am an able-bodied and seasoned traveller (I am a touring professional musician; I have seen my share of delays). I can only extrapolate the level of distaste for travelling to the VI that is being created by this airline, directly conflicting with the relentless efforts of the citizens to rebuild. For some travellers, it could be prohibitive. Air Sunshine once again earns its common nickname of Air Sometimes.