THERE was no panic but passengers were annoyed.
That was the reaction among Trinidadian passengers on a Frontier Airlines flight after information was relayed onboard that rocket debris had prevented their flight from landing in Puerto Rico on Thursday night.
The airline had departed from Trinidad for Puerto Rico earlier on Thursday.
US space technology company SpaceX said on Thursday that its Starship space vehicle broke up during a flight meant to test its capabilities. The rocket system’s upper stage appeared to have disintegrated somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico or possibly the Caribbean Sea, reports said.
Shortly after SpaceX said it lost touch with the spacecraft, videos emerged on social media showing debris streaming across the sky. Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, shared a video of the debris on X, saying, ‘Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed.’ In an interview with the Express yesterday, Stefan Theophilus recounted his experience and that of other passengers with the Frontier flight.
Theophilus, who was on board the flight to Puerto Rico, explained that his flight was scheduled to leave Trinidad at 5.45 p.m. on Thursday.
‘Around 4.30 p.m. while we were going to check in, we got a message from the clerks at the back that they were having some delays and the flight would not arrive (in Puerto Rico) at 9 p.m. However, he said the flight was actually more or less on time as it departed at 6.10 p.m.
According to Theophilus, it was observed that the flight was taking longer than the one hour and 45 minutes to arrive in Puerto Rico. He said when it was time to land in Puerto Rico, the pilot informed passengers of the debris issue.
‘We had been circling for a while; persons wouldn’t have known that, but (information from traffic control, pilots said) they are not allowed to enter the air traffic space because of rocket debris,’ Theophilus said.
He said further that passengers were puzzled by the information. ‘At that point we felt lost-rocket debris, this is something new.’
He said the flight had to return to Trinidad as the aircraft could not continue to circle in the air, and as a result it returned to Trinidad for refuelling at 8.45 p.m., but shortly after it was announced that the Puerto Rico airspace was cleared and the flight then left again.
Asked about the mood on the flight upon hearing of the falling debris, Theophilus said people thought it was far-fetched.
‘It wasn’t a sense of panic but an annoyance, so you testing your rocket and disrupt air traffic. The conversation was more or less based on look at what the lower class go through for the sake of the big boys and their toys,’ he added.
Meanwhile, Caribbean Airlines (CAL) yesterday announced the delay of three flights between Piarco International Airport and JFK, New York, due to ‘air space closures’.