Susannah Ray, a teacher at a Manhattan high school, was supposed to be in class on Monday morning, welcoming her photography students back on the first day of the winter quarter. Her daughter, Bettina, 14, should have been at her own high school to start the second semester of her freshman year.
Instead, they waited in Barbados, taking turns on a single laptop to teach and attend their classes after the U.S. military operation on Saturday to capture Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, caused widespread flight cancellations in the Caribbean. JetBlue rebooked them, along with Ms. Ray’s husband, on a flight that departs on Jan. 11, eight days after they were originally scheduled to return to New York.
Ms. Ray, 53, and her family are among the estimated thousands of travelers stuck in the Caribbean for a third straight day since the military operation, during which the Federal Aviation Administration closed parts of Caribbean airspace to U.S. civilian aircraft.
On Sunday and Monday, major airlines were operating extra flights and, in some cases, using larger airplanes to bring back stranded passengers. But the scale of the disruption, which grounded hundreds of flights at the end of the holiday travel season, meant some passengers had to wait days for available seats. Travel insurance was unlikely to reimburse the extra expenses, since most plans exclude coverage for disruptions related to military activity.
“Everyone’s like, ‘Great, you get another week in Barbados,’” Ms. Ray said in a phone interview on Sunday. “But we feel like, Wow, we are stranded here. We have things we need to do and people depending on us.”
Ms. Ray said the disruption had forced the family to spend at least an additional $2,500, and had sent them into overdrive trying to plan and budget for the extra time abroad. One immediate concern: Ms. Ray and her daughter did not have another week’s supply of a medication that they take daily. They planned to visit a local clinic on Monday, hoping to get a new prescription.
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Caribbean Travelers Are Stranded After U.S. Raid in Venezuela Cancels Flights
