The hot and cold Xmas/NY break

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JY271 NAS-PLS
ATR42-500
VQ-TRS
On time

I returned the car fairly early at the airport, or more correctly, parked it in the short term carpark, put the ticket and key in a lock box in the glove compartment and then took a video of the condition of the car and where it was located. Then used WhatsApp to send the video to the hire car company.

Then I could head to the Domestic and International terminal, not to be confused with the US dep/arr terminal.



Was very quiet early in the morning with only the Inter-Caribbean desks open right down the far end. Saw a 'Pineapple Air' desk and some other local airlines.

Very quick security and I don't recall any outbound immigration again. Went up to the departure lounge area and got a mexican brekky wrap, but had to go to Dunkin Donuts for anything vaguely resembling coffee.


ATR42-500 was being prepped on the tarmac and shortly after, for boarding, we went downstairs and just walked out to the aircraft.


Some Nassau shots on departure:



Note the cruise terminal.

Then after a zero-service one hour flight, it was descent into Providenciales, Turks & Caicos.





JY (InterCaribbean) seem to have a larger fleet of the Embraer-145s rather than ATRs.

 

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I'd booked another AirBnB for the stay here and couldn't check in after the morning arrival, so went and found a cafe/restaurant in the main Grace Bay beach area, for some late morning brunch.





Lovely spot. Quite representative of the whole of Grace Bay with lovely white sand and that same azure water. Mostly tourists from the US but I have heard the occasional Brit accent. Turks & Caicos Islands (TCI) is another British Overseas Territory, but uses the USD as its currency.

They drive on the left. It is therefore strange that Avis would give me this hire car:

Drive on the left, but from the left seat.
Also, a speedo that is in kmh, but all speed signs are in mph. Random.

Some images from the balcony of my accom, next to a canal.

 

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Royal Turks & Caicos GC was my leisure whilst here:


More old coral outcroppings around this course.





It's a tough gig, but someone has to do it.

This marks 85 (out of 195 countries with golf courses) I have played in. The 195 number is always open to debate about what actually constitutes a country. eg: does this one, as a British Overseas Territory count, or should it be considered as the UK? Is Greenland a country, or is it covered by Denmark; Bonaire and Netherlands; New Caledonia and France; etc. I do consider all of those examples separate. What I don't consider separate is Eng, N.Ire, Sco & Wales: I consider those to be the UK and it only gets one line on my tracking spreadsheet.

Country 100 (for golf) will hopefully be coming up in the next few years, so should it be South Korea, or Mexico? I have either of those as an option, specifically chosen as they both have a World Top 100 ranked golf course which I would plan to play during my visit to that country.

 

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After golf I found a Mexican restaurant that had cricket on! So that became the site for dinner.



I actually sat outside and was fortunate I chose to do so, as it meant I saw the aftereffects of the SpaceX Starship 'rapid unscheduled disassembly' which occurred over the TCI. I started the thread about contrails or a rocket whilst sitting there. For those who haven't seen that thread, this was the view:


View looking straight up from my table. Curiosity piqued, I then walked out into the little square area next to the restaurant.


This was the view looking to the nor-west, or the direction Starship was coming from as it burnt up.


This was the view looking sou-east, the direction the debris was travelling.

No one from the restaurant had any clue what it was at the time.

After finishing my meal they'd just started screening the Aus-W v Eng-W one day international game from Hobart, so I sat at the bar and watched that for a while, chatting to the staff about the view of the sky from earlier. Due to AFFs global reach and 'always on' knowledge, I was able to show the staff the post from @offshore171 explaining exactly what it was. I had to laugh when one American voice also obviously finding out what it was, quite happily yelled out that Elon Musk could EAD. (iykyk) No sympathy for the Starship break-up there.

 

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AA1901 PLS-MIA
B737-800
N992AN
Timings TBA

Well I’m seated in my J seat and the door is closed but our scheduled departure time has just come and gone. It’s been like this for ten minutes now. The aircraft arrived about 20 minutes early and boarding started 30 minutes before sched dep. Boarding was complete 15 mins later, but now nothing. Flight crew gave some vague message about awaiting clearance during boarding but nothing since door closed.



Four rows of J and all seats full as expected on a US carrier. The rest of the plane must be very lightly loaded as boarding was very quick and there was no faff with overhead bin space. I can’t actually see the Y cabin from row two due to the dividers behind row 4.

Barely acknowledged welcome on entering the aircraft and no interaction with the cabin crew since. No PDBs for anyone. In fact the only time the crew have spoken to pax is when they had to repeatedly tell the pax in row 1 to put their carry on bags above them.



15 minutes late and we’re finally taxiing. Flight mode on until MIA in an hour.

 

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Uurghh. Single runway with no taxiway, resulting in backtracking requirements at both ends = lots of waiting to depart. I’ll write up a specific post later on when the travel is done for the day. It was comical.

We departed 50 minutes late but arrived only 10 minutes late, unsurprisingly due to 40 minutes of schedule padding!

After immigration and the excessive security I’ve reached the MIA AA Flagship lounge thanks to my lifetime QF SG which normally just sits quietly in the background.

 

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Need to back up for a post and mention PLS airport.

There were a number of Tripadvisor threads about the airport in the Providenciales forum and none were complementary. Long waits and overcrowding featured regularly, especially in the early afternoon when a bank of North American flights depart. My flight was scheduled at 1143 which is early in the bank, so I didn’t foresee any problems.

Dropped the Avis hire car off at their depot about one kilometre from the terminal, then they ran me down to departures with their shuttle. No waiting at the AA Priority lane, which I could’ve used via oneworld Saph, or the fact I’d booked J. Only took about two minutes to have my boarding passes in hand and walk the 200m to international departure security.

Shoes off again, but minimal waiting and into the small and already fairly cramped central departure gate area.





Many people had gone up the stairs shown in the first image as there is an open air seating area up there. I’d suggest the gate area was designed to accommodate maybe two or three simultaneous flights, but the departure board looked like this:



Immediately before these flights there was an AA 737 for Charlotte at 1140 and my flight to MIA scheduled for 1143.

Before the bank of larger RPT flights commenced there were a number of bizjet departures. There are five aircraft active from this screenshot with four opposite the main terminal. I’d seen a LOT of bizjet movements during my time in the TCI, which is not at all surprising as it’s a lovely and not yet overdeveloped place.



One that took my interest was this cool looking thing which had arrived and might have just been refueling. Also the BBQ code caught my eye.



In summary, PLS needs to build a new terminal to cope with the number of passengers moving through. While they’re at it they should probably get a full length taxiway sorted.

 

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Onto the issue with a single runway at PLS and the requirements for backtracking to both the departure end, and after an arrival.

There is no full length taxiway at PLS and the main RPT ramp is on the northern side, close to the centre of the runway, opposite a GA (mostly bizjets) ramp. Further to the east on the northern side of the rwy is a regular GA ramp and then at the eastern end is the InterCaribbean Airlines parking and maint facility.



On my AA1901 flight to MIA we pushed back from the middle of the terminal area with this kind of view.

A Caicos Express Beech 1900 was just landing and that cool little black jet was waiting opposite where we were going to wait for permission to enter the rwy.



We pulled forward to be facing the bizjets and waited for an AA A321 to land.



We then had to wait whilst that jet turned around and backtracked to the RPT ramp, where it entered through a different taxiway near us.



The problem for that aircraft was that it couldn’t safely turn into its gate as the rear of our aircraft must have been in the way. So we both sat waiting whilst the bizjet departed. It didn’t backtrack, just used an intersection departure which was lucky for it. We couldn’t enter the rwy as there was more inbound traffic.



This Cessna had been orbiting and waiting to land and then there was our AA sister ship with the very similar flight number, also lined up for arrival.

The Cessna landed and then we entered the rwy, which I thought was going to be really tight if we needed to backtrack and then depart ahead of AA1900, so I figured as the Y cabin was lightly loaded, maybe we too were going for an intersection departure rather than full length. Instead we turned left, rolled the 100m down to the other taxiway and went back into the RPT ramp behind the A321. It could then pull forward into the gates. Effectively we just did three sides of a square.



Then AA1900 could land (and backtrack).



It therefore looked like this, with another bizjet also holding and waiting.



AA1900 reverse thrust engaged.


We’d also taxied further forward by this time, to the third of the taxiways to/from the RPT ramp, probably so we didn’t block them by holding on taxiway A as we did to the A321.

But we had to keep waiting as there was also an Air Canada A220-300 arriving. And an InterCaribbean ATR42 had snuck in front of us whilst we did our taxiing dance.




So we waited for that aircraft to also backtrack and get to the RPT ramp. Right time for some departures now with the state of play this:



No.
There was a US Customs patrol aircraft which had been out (departed from PLS that morning) doing some surveillance work and now it was arriving.





And so was JetBlue…
Also note not just how congested the RPT ramp was getting, but also the two aircraft waiting down the far end, as to get from their parking they needed to taxi along the runway to get to their pax!





Finally, after B6 backtracked and then the JY ATR departed (the same aircraft I had flown in to the Turks &Caicos with three days earlier), we could finally enter the runway, track back for a full length departure and line up!



Huzzah!

Timeline of the buffoonery for anyone left with the will to live:
1112 - scanned my boarding pass at the gate to board.
1115 - seated in 2A and watching the ramp as well as FR24.
1125 - boarding complete.
1143 - scheduled departure time.
1150 - push back.
1208 - enter rwy to taxi around to clear blockage.
1235 - actual departure.

 

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Some other gratuitous Providenciales shots from departure.


Grace Bay on the left and looking toward the other Caicos Islands in the background.

Left turn to head north, giving a good view of the lagoon.


Then another left turn to head toward MIA and back toward Providenciales.


On finals for MIA.


MIA is a regularly busy AA hub.


Busy inside the terminal too. I didn’t have to change terminals just walk a couple of hundred metres to the Flagship lounge and then another couple of hundred further from there to my connection gate after about 90 minutes lounge time.


It’s worth noting that at MIA I had to wait about 30 minutes for immigration, then collect bags and redrop them with AA (at their drop area close to the baggage belts), then reclear security to get back airside and to the Flagship lounge. Oneworld status or flying J doesn’t help for any of that time.