Meghan Lescinskas and her husband were nearing the end of their honeymoon in Saint Lucia when the US launched its raid on Venezuela.
Their JetBlue flight home to New York was among the nearly 1,000 flights to and from the Caribbean that were canceled last Saturday. The region’s airspace was closed for around 24 hours due to the military activity.
“I understand that this was a rare circumstance, so I called JetBlue and was on hold for hours,” Lescinskas told Business Insider.
After reaching JetBlue via its app’s live chat, Lescinskas was offered a flight on January 16, nearly two weeks after her original return date, according to screenshots of her conversation that were shared with Business Insider. Struggling to find affordable alternative routes home, she and her husband used a travel agent to find them a flight on Saturday, January 10.
“Our six-day honeymoon has now turned into a 14-day trip,” she said. “I am a teacher and have missed school due to this delay, and we also had to pay for extra nights at our hotel that we had not planned for.”
While airlines have added extra flights to help stranded passengers, some, like Lescinskas, say they are still having to wait another week to get home, spending thousands of dollars on accommodation and alternative flights.
The Department of Transportation did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider about how, or whether, people may be compensated or refunded.
‘Nothing, nothing, nothing’
On Saturday, January 3, Warren Doyle, a retired airline pilot, was in St Thomas in the Virgin Islands with his family, a party of six. After checking their flight status all morning, he said it wasn’t until around 4:30 p.m. that he received a notification their American Airlines flight home had been canceled.
“We started hunting for accommodation Saturday afternoon, and there was nothing. There was nothing, nothing, nothing,” he told Business Insider.
Eventually, they were able to find two rooms for a night at a three-star hotel. “It’s a very rough part of town,” he said, with music from nearby venues playing until 3 a.m.
Doyle said he booked a Spirit Airlines flight home to Charlotte, North Carolina, via Florida, arriving early on the morning of Saturday, January 10 — a full week after he was first supposed to fly home.
“I can’t speak to other islands, but St. Thomas is a mess,” he told Business Insider. “American’s apathy is unbelievable.”
“It’s costing us, for six people, almost $1,000 a day,” he added.
American Airlines did not respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider.
Since Sunday, American has added more than 50 extra flights to and from the Caribbean, but listed just one out of St Thomas, which departed Sunday.
“Every time I hear an airplane go over here, I look outside and see what it is. I see a lot of private traffic — loads and loads of corporate jets in and out,” Doyle said. Flightradar24 data showed 17 business jets departed St Thomas on Monday.
Lescinskas said that she was struggling to get a refund for her canceled flight as she was “going back and forth” between JetBlue and Sandals, the resort through which her trip was booked.
A JetBlue spokesperson told Business Insider that, after scheduling additional flights, it offered Lescinskas a flight on Friday, but she chose to stay with her new booking on a different airline. “After confirming their decision, JetBlue submitted the authorization for the travel agent to refund the fare of their JetBlue flight,” they added.
“We remain focused on supporting those affected by Saturday’s forced closure of Caribbean airspace,” the spokesperson said. JetBlue has added more than 30 extra flights so far, they said.
In a statement, Sandals Resorts said its priority is to support guests and said it has offered reduced rates, waived penalties, and let guests extend their stays due to the airspace closure.
Doyle and his family found another place to stay until their flight out on Friday. “We’re fortunately comfortable where we are,” he said. “We’re just taking it a day at a time.”
“I can’t imagine being stuck in a position where you have limited funds, or you’re running up your credit card account. It runs into thousands of dollars in no time at all.”
Many of the extra flights have been operating from Puerto Rico, but travelers on other islands have limited options to get there due to high demand and the fact that inter-island flights use small airplanes.
“How there can be a 10-day kickback of disruption just blows my mind,” said the former airline pilot. “It’s not like we’re in Outer Mongolia, we’re in the Caribbean. We’re a stone’s throw from the mainland of the United States.”
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