St Thomas airport

I have been hearing that AA at St Thomas airport the check in lines have been at least 2 hours to check in and in many cases have been 3 hours. Has this gotten any better? Thinking of fly home from Beef Island airport thru San Juan. Thanks for any info.

It is really horrible on weekends - we try to never leave there on a Saturday or Sunday if it can be avoided....

Are you departing from St. Thomas or Tortola? If the latter, why hassle with getting over to STT? The ferries aren't running (although you can arrange for a private water taxi). Beef is easy and not crowed. If you are already in St. Thomas, why go through the trouble of getting to the BVI?...the only way to get there is via air.

Just an FYI - there is outbound ferry service available. Native Son for sure. Not sure about the other companies.

Didn't realize they started that up, Jason. Do you think they will open the sea ports fully in March still?

lol. That is the question of the year! I'll haven't heard anything official and my opinion would be purely a guess...

First Dec 8th, then Jan 20 something, then March..... I agree, it's likely they will kick the can down the road again. When you said they had opened up outbound ferries, it sounded more promising for March. Thanks, Jason.

The outbound ferries are basically cargo runs you see advertised periodically. I see Native Son mostly on Wednesday and Friday. Occasionally a Monday trip too.

Can won't be kicked ,March 1st they will open they have spoken with charter industry and given assurances.

Now if I was a betting man...

Similar to the assurances for Dec. 8 and Jan. 15....

Here's hoping..as we wait to get vaccinated here now we are also hoping that will loosen the protocols. Is it true the BVI's are only getting 8,000 doses for 30,000 residents?

No. 8,000 doses came yesterday but there are more coming that the government purchased and more coming from the UK. Malone said they are planning to have 40,000 available. Not sure who those will go to but seems like plenty. I'd guess the population is down quite a bit now. Lots of expat workers have gone home.

I need to know what people’s experience has been lately with AA and the check in lines. Clod.

We flew out of STT in November. No lines. Volume is down.

You are correct though, it can be very bad.

Do you have global entry? The center unmarked line at customs is global entry and never has a line.

Have fun.

If you use a porter they take you to the front of the line. Worth every penny.

Global Entry and TSA Precheck are faster than a porter.

Cheers, RickG

Be sure you have your Global Entry card ON YOU if you plan to take advantage of it — after years of NEVER needing to present it with all the international travel I did for work? STT demands it. Go figure.

When we were there in November they did not have TSA precheck open. They did have Global Entry open which was a bit confusing about where to go. When we were there you had to wait in line with everyone else but when you got to the front there was a special line for Global Entry. So...you couldn't really skip the line but you could get through quickly once you got to the front.

Clod, we flew AA home from STT a few weeks ago on a Tuesday (Jan 19th) ...zero issues, we were there 2 hours ahead and were totally fine

When do they plan to start vaccinating?

It’s all about not flying on a Saturday or a Sunday.

George: Platinum News quoted the Minister of Health on feb 5th as saying the vaccinations will start next week on Thursday.