On July 17th, after a wonderful night in Aruba, we arrive at the airport 2 hours before our flight on BE with confirmed tickets in hand, already a day late thanks to Emily and Air Jamaica.
So did 26 other people with confirmed tickets.
We were all told we were on standby as the flight was sold out, and the next confirmed flight that we could get on to Bonaire was July 24th.
Despite the "plane is full" story, the agents continued to sell tickets, and surprisingly enough, some of those people got on the plane.
Where did they put them, UNDER the seats???
The best part of this ordeal, was one of the officials, Anoushka, who worked very hard to resolve this for all of us. She is GREAT!!!!!!
The bottom line was that if all of us were to pay $125. CASH US DOLLARS, we could get a plane over to take us to Bonaire.
Under protest, we all asked for, and paid $100.00 US each and got a "Charter" flight, even though we all had confirmed tickets.
There was a family from Bonaire, 2 parents and 3 children that did not have $500, so we all asked if the parents paid could the children fly free.
They said yes.
Hmmmm, if they said yes so quickly to that, could we all have gotten the plane for less? Say for WHAT WE ALL HAD ALREADY PAID WITH OUR CONFIRMED TICKETS?
When asked about the exit tax, one of the other officials said we were considered "Transits" and did not need to pay the exit tax.
Of course not, we had just paid ransom.

Jolen,

Was this money in "addition" to what you all paid for your original tickets?

Thanks.

Liz

Yes, it was in addition to.

How is this possible????

This is criminal!!!

Important is to know if the confirmed ticket was for the same airline which did the charter - If possible please let me know. Did you have a confirmed ticket on BE??? Being in transit is O.K. because that is what it is.

Yes, all of the hostages had confirmed tickets on BE, and BE is the airline that sent the special "charter" flight (on one of their airplanes) at an additional cost of $100.00 per person, US CASH ONLY.

Jolen did you put in a claim for a refund on your reserved ticket? It sounds more than fair to do so.

Jolen,
I am not understanding how you had confirmed tickets on the BE flight if the Air Jamaica flight arrived a day late. When we have taken Air Jamaica in the past they would not book the entire schedule through BE so it was if we had two separate trips which meant if Air Jamaica was late we were just out of luck on the next leg of the trip on a different airline since they were not purchased on the same "ticket".
Did Air Jamaica ticket the entire schedule including the BE flight?

Our ORIGINAL tickets were Delta to Atlanta, then AJ to MoBay, and then AJ to Bonaire. Return trip was AJ to MoBay, AJ to Atlanta, and Delta home. AJ "terminated service" FROM Bonaire, so Delta reissued our return tickets to go AA to San Juan, then to Tampa. When watching the path of the storm, and finding our flight cancelled, we called Delta, our original issuing agent and they re-booked us on the flight to Aruba, then from Aruba to Bonaire on BE as they were saying that AJ was not scheduled to come into Bonaire until the 23rd and they were making NO EXCEPTIONS. Air Jamaica never scheduled any part of this trip from the beginning. Which was just as well, as our trip to Bonaire last year was a GIANT AIR JAMAICAN PAIN IN THE !!!!