Big strange blue

Hello Folks , I very big blue passenger plane just landed .

Flightaware shows an arrival of an Airbus 330-300, operated by Hi Fly Malta, a subsidiary of Portugese charter airline Hi Fly.

Okay thanks, was wondering what it was.

You're most welcome.

Beyond some basic flight information, that flight is a bit of a mystery to me, and I am as curious as you are. The aircraft, in its typical passenger configuration, would seat 285 passengers. The flight appears to have originated in Portugal, but neither that or the origin of the passengers (if any) is certain. I'm curious, is there a large Portuguese population on Sint Maarten/St Martin that I'm not aware of? Is SXM a big summer vacation destination for Portugal?

A few months post-Irma we were on island. At that time we talked to some guys from Portugal who were there doing iron work on Maho area reconstruction. They said there are many Portuguese crews who do that sort of work all over the world. I don't have any idea if that sort of activity is on-going, or not, given the current state of affairs.

No way nothing like that now .

I'm told that the Voyager ferry was packed with passengers from St Barth, which has a large Portuguese worker population, and who boarded the charter flight. The charter made another stop in the DR, and is now on its way back to Portugal.

Okay thanks for this very valuable info, because we did see the said Ferry arriving very loaded and was wondering what's up !

Leslie, from what I'm hearing, on the transportation front, it was a very well coordinated transfer of a large number of Portuguese nationals from St Barth to SXM, including the ferry, prearranged buses, and a charter flight out of SXM. However, there were failures on the communications side. The Prefecture should have shared information on the transfer with the people of St Martin, and also with the people of Sint Maarten. Seeing a packed ferry come in, many with masks, but with no social distancing, and with no information on the plans of the large group of arrivals, was disconcerting to many people.

Yes , correct.

Portugal is having a bad time with the pandemic. These workers are returning to a problematic area.