When Haiti’s government announced the reopening of the country’s main international airport and domestic terminal in Port-au-Prince last month, many passengers had hoped to see a return of flights to the country.

But in a notice to customers, the main domestic airline — the country’s only direct commercial air link to the U.S. amid an ongoing ban on U.S.-based airlines flying into the capital — said it will resume operations only when certain conditions are met, including “ the re-establishment of insurance coverage.”

Haitian-owned Sunrise Airways did not go into specifics, and didn’t respond to a request for comment. But aviation experts who closely monitor global conflict zones say the airline’s notice illustrates how the ongoing violence by powerful gangs could have far-reaching consequences for air travel to Haiti beyond the Federal Aviation Administration’s ban on U.S. commercial and cargo flight operators. Haiti’s security crisis is creating challenges that are akin to countries at war, the experts said.

“Even if the FAA rescinds its restriction, airlines may not return, and it may not be simply because it’s safe or not safe,” said Matt Borie, chief intelligence officer for Osprey Flight Solutions, an aviation-security firm. “It’s a financial decision. It’s a reputational decision. It’s a risk decision.”

While JetBlue Airways has suspended all flights to Haiti until April 30, American Airlines announced an indefinite suspension of its daily Miami-Port-au-Prince service.

“It’s not simply down to ‘Is my aircraft going to be targeted by bullets or not?’ ” said Borie, who follows aviation-related issues in conflict zones. “It’s ‘If that does happen, will I have insurance coverage? If it happens to someone else, am I willing to take the reputational damage? Am I willing to cancel flights and take on the cost that comes from flight cancellations, and if our company gets into the paper, how does this affect our reputation?’ ”

Haiti is conflict zone

Haiti’s escalating gang crisis is not like a traditional war. But the violence, which claimed at least 5,601 lives last year, makes the Caribbean nation a conflict zone. And in the world of aviation safety and insurance costs, that places the country in the same category as cities like Tel Aviv and Beirut, where concerns about rockets hitting airplanes have ramped up insurance costs, Borie said.

“For future exposure, war-risks underwriters have a very limited appetite right now, especially in places where they know that aircraft are being subjected to direct threats,” he said.

Even before gangs opened fire in November on three U.S. jetliners over Port-au-Prince airspace, Haiti air travel was under pressure. Pilots with major carriers were uneasy about flying into the capital and insurance companies warned charter plane operators that they would not be covered.

“We have aircraft being targeted by small arms fire on approach to an international airport in a densely populated, urban environment,” Borie said. “When these aircraft get damaged by these bullets, these are insurance claims that are significant.”

Fort Lauderdale-based Spirit Airline’s Flight 951 was approaching the runway in Port-au-Prince on Nov. 11 when it was struck by bullets. A flight attendant was injured and Spirit landed in the neighboring Dominican Republic. JetBlue Airways and American Airlines also reported being struck by gunfire.

No passengers were injured in any of the incidents, but all three carriers immediately announced a pause in service to Haiti.

After the attack, Haiti closed the international airport and the FAA instituted a 30-day ban, before exempting the international airport in Cap-Haïtien in the north. The FAA ban on flying to Port-au-Prince was extended until at least March. The extension came on the same day that Haitian authorities reopened Port-au-Prince’s Toussaint Louverture International Airport and the adjacent Guy Malary domestic terminal.

In a statement at the time, the Haitian prime minister’s office said police and soldiers, along with Kenyan-led multinational mission, had boosted security in the area and a test flight was successful.

Still, there have been no regular flights at the airport. Last month the Colombian government opted to land in Cap-Haïtien rather than Port-au-Prince when it sent a plane to pick up a Haitian government delegation for meetings in Bogotá. Officials got to the northern Haiti city from the capital on a helicopter being leased by Taiwan for Haitian officials to move security forces to hot zones.

Unclear when service will resume

Mathilde Tisserand, Osprey’s specialist on Haiti, said it’s unclear when Sunrise Airways will be able to resume operations in the capital. The company’s woes, she said, are linked to the deteriorating security environment, not the FAA ban.

“When you look at the statistics of criminality in Haiti over the last two years, between 2022 and 2024, based on statistics from the United Nations and so on, it keeps deteriorating,” Tisserand said.

In late February and March, the airport was among several government structures targeted by armed gangs, along with the nearby seaport. At the time, several Sunrise aircraft had been struck by gunfire before the airport was closed for nearly three months.

The Haitian government at the time announced a four-phase plan to beef up security. The plan included the demolition of nearby homes and buildings; the construction of a road to serve as a buffer zone and the implementation of strategic checkpoints by the police and army. The only thing that has been achieved so far, Tisserand said, is the demolition of approximately 200 homes.

“Nothing happened during the entire summer up until October, which is when we only began the second stage of that project, which is to demolish other houses,” she said. “You still have those three other stages to be completed and we honestly don’t know what’s the time frame for this to be achieved because they’ve already been considerable delay. As long as this is not completed, the security risk will continue.”

Insurance costs

The decision over the restoration of air service to Port-au-Prince doesn’t just depend on security assessments, the experts said. Insurance costs are also a factor. Underwriters are taking into account a string of incidents, which include the March 2022 burning of a private airplane in southwest Haiti, and attacks that forced the closure of the main seaport.

On Thursday, the seaport’s main operator was again forced to suspend operations after a gang leader, Micanor Altes, issued threats. The leader of the Wharf Jérémie gang, Altes was accused of massacring more than 200 mostly elderly Haitians last month.

“Gangs taking over a port facility in Port-au-Prince is going to mean that that insurance company is also probably going to be concerned about gangs taking over another part of critical infrastructure,” Borie said.

Spillover effect

Borie said insurers are “very cautious” about underwriting coverage for aircraft flying into Port-au-Prince, which falls under the already strained war-risk insurance market.

That market has become very strained since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 led to a dozen aircraft being stuck on the ground in Ukraine and insurers being subjected to up to $1 billion in claims after failing to cancel policies, he said. Hundreds of insured aircraft that were also confiscated by Russia are now subject to insurance claims.

“There’s about $10 billion worth of liabilities here that are being negotiated and dealt with in court cases, primarily in Europe right now, and insurance companies, hypothetically, are on the hook for more risk losses in the billions of dollars,” Borie said.

“Any time you have aircraft being fired on and damaged, insurance prices are going to go up,” he added. “But when you start to factor in the number of aircraft that were confiscated related to Russia, Ukraine, and the pending claims there, and then you start to look at the additional full-haul losses that have happened in the last three years, there’s not a lot of appetite for insurance companies to take on risks that they can clearly see, especially in places where it’s difficult to mitigate that risk.”

Haiti’s economic situation “makes it very difficult for the Haitian government, for example, to come in and say, ‘We’ll take on your full liability for flights in and out of Port-au-Prince airport,’ because were a catastrophic event to occur, how would they pay for that financially?” Borie said.

The analysts said there are no guarantees that the FAA will lift the fan in March, especially with a new president, Donald Trump, in the White House. Either way Haiti, at the very least, needs to carry out the second and third phases of making the international airport more secure, the experts warned.

Tisserand said it could be a long time before Haiti sees a return to regular commercial flights, especially since the ongoing Kenya-led security mission still doesn’t have the envisioned 2,500 troops and continues to struggle against armed gangs.

Last weekend, 150 Guatemalans and an advanced team of eight Salvadorans arrived in Port-au-Prince to join the 416 foreign officers already in Haiti. Days later, Barbados Foreign Minister Kerrie Symmonds told Barbados Today the Caribbean nation would no longer deploy its troops to join the security mission because Haiti had become too dangerous and the effort lacked strategic planning.

“Right now, the international security mission is very unlikely to prove successful,” Tisserand said. “The national police don’t have enough funds for personnel. They don’t have enough materiel to combat the gangs…. It’s still unlikely to be enough at this time to considerably improve the security environment from one day to another. If I may say, it is going to take probably years still.”

The airline’s calculations are not just about safety, but about costs and profit, Borie said.

“The cost of insurance versus the demand that they’re going to generate from the flight on the pricing, those things need to equate as well,” Borie said. “Airlines may consider it to be safe at the time to conduct the flight, but it may not be a profitable route.”


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